What we can learn from brand marketers in designing a better patient experience.

More importantly, customers are feeling it too. Brand loyalists today expect custom touchpoints with tailored offers and experiences. In retail, financial, travel, entertainment, and many other consumer sectors, technology is leveraged to elevate the customer experience and grease the skids to repeat engagement. Customers are all too eager to share positive engagements, too. Today, brand reputations can be made or broken from customer experiences almost instantly. 

In the healthcare sector, however, technology is well behind the curve when it comes to its “customers.” Designing a better patient experience is a job still to be done.  

The truth about patient-first

“Patient experience” is often postured around the modern ideal of patient-first healthcare. To be sure, prioritizing a patient’s personal care is the right intention and would certainly elevate the healthcare experience. Unfortunately, the ideal is compromised all along the care journey. 

Instead of simplifying tasks, healthcare technology, and its increasing complexity, stands as a barrier to engagement. 

EHRs themselves are acting as a wedge between doctor and patient. Documentation tasks are overwhelming a provider’s day and sucking time away from personalized care. 

Fragmented and siloed “solutions,” so rife in the healthcare sector, by nature cannot cater to the broader patient experience, let alone improve it. Inclinations to infuse existing systems with artificial intelligence tools or other new technologies will only further the fragmentation and isolation. As long as the models stay the same (i.e., favoring insurance company needs over clinical needs, shunning transparency, etc.), transformation is virtually impossible. 

There’s also the problem of balance. Too much reliance on technology can make the patient experience feel impersonal. It can lead to a meltdown of patient services and trust in the face of data breaches or system failures. For better or worse, technology can also influence how patients feel about you and the quality of your care. Think of it in the same way that in-person impressions of your office environment can affect your brand image. 

To be fair, some healthcare organizations and systems do aspire to patient-centered care. There is some evidence of progress, albeit slow, of more tailored communication from providers, especially around preventive care.  

Where to start

With any luck, healthcare isn’t the only thing people think about every day. Their days are filled with challenges, tasks, appointments, deadlines, family, friends, pets, and laundry. Designing a better patient experience starts with embracing the human condition—and all its laundry—instead of ignoring it. We can’t improve the patient experience until we fully understand the patient—beyond the disorder or condition presented. Smart design acknowledges, understands, and accounts for aspects of their lives that can affect the way they engage with healthcare. 

At MediSprout, we see the tremendous opportunity that technology provides us in our effort to design a better patient experience through ease, simplicity, and empowerment. We also see the pitfalls. We consider both as we marry solutions with the realities of a patient’s day (the laundry). 

Here’s how: 

1. Mobile first. Marketers have their own term for design that catches up with customers where they are: mobile-first. In healthcare, we can use mobile-first technology to make engagement easier for patients from virtually anywhere and at any time. It raises healthcare’s potential for a more seamless fit into patients’ busy days.
2. Video visits. Many appointments don’t require an in-person visit, but are still important enough to carry out. Adding a video visit option helps maintain care continuity and reduces no shows. Remember, though, that complexity stifles engagement. So any old video option won’t do, it must employ an interface that is patient friendly. Intuitive. It must also demonstrate a level of security and privacy that lifts the confidence of the patient. 
3. Streamlined onboarding. Patient onboarding is another one of those functions in which patient and provider experiences overlap. Yet systems driving each experience are designed separately, sometimes derailing first engagement altogether. We can solve that simply by integrating practice management and EHR platforms. With seamless integration, many of the time-wasting onboarding redundancies that affect both patient and provider can be eliminated. 
4. Records ownership. Patients now have more ownership and control of their personal healthcare records than ever before. With secure and private storage space, patients can maintain accurate and complete personal healthcare history and share it immediately without delays in care. Empowered patients are more engaged with their own care.  
5. Family-friendly. Families are often important components in the patient experience. So why do so many systems virtually shut them out? Let’s use technology to be more inviting for families starting with greater account visibility. And for Pete’s sake, no more requiring an email address for every family member on the account. 

Taking a page

Frankly, it wouldn’t hurt if healthcare technology functioned more like that of consumer marketing technology, at least in spirit. Many consumer brands masterfully use technology to facilitate engagement that slips easily and seamlessly in and out of consumers’ hectic days. 

Similarly, we need patients to say, “Gee, that was easy. Maybe I can do this more often.” 

Boom! 

Therein lies the breakthrough: Simplified engagement with healthcare is paramount to a better patient experience, which fosters stronger therapeutic alliances and care continuity. 

Practices win, too. Positive brand reputations and sustainable business growth can all be traced to elevated patient experiences. 

Thoughtfully designed technology makes it all happen.

Samant Virk, MD, is the founder and CEO of MediSprout.