Cleveland, OH – The Cleveland Clinic was the first major academic medical center to make patient experience a strategic goal, hire and appoint a Chief Experience Officer, and one the first to establish an Office of Patient Experience. And while the patient is obviously the focus, data is at the heart of if all.
The clinic’s new Chief Experience Officer, Dr. Adrienne Boissy, outlined her vision last September at the Pop Health Forum in Chicago and just last week expanded on her vision and how the Cleveland Clinic is prioritizing the patient experience. Two of the three priorities speak volumes to not only listening to the patients’ exact needs but also to several trends our innovation team is closely following in 2017.
Priority One: Developing Your Own Engagement
Rating systems are as powerful as the actual experience these days – if people don’t like a person or product, an online review can be detrimental to future outcomes. Healthcare is not any different – when shopping for a new doctor, a second opinion, or a healthcare facility, research shows us we take doctor ratings just as serious.
The Cleveland Clinic wanted to aggregate data differently and not just from uncertain sources online within a broad rating system – but elevate actual patient data from surveys after they receive care or while still within the hospital’s care system. The new system requires 30 or more ratings before published as well, giving physicians time to cultivate a true rating rather than a ‘1 out of 5 stars’ based on potentially something they couldn’t control or rather, just a bad day at the office!
Priority Two: Designing With Empathy
“Who is on my care team and what is happening to me today?” These are the two most commonly cared about and requested questions from patients at the Cleveland Clinic. Yet, for example, with 22 different apps available for patients within the system – none are designed or capable of answering those two questions.
If you are solving the pickle problem (in the cafeteria) – (and) if they are able to order pickles and mustards (on a digital device) but not figure out what’s happening to them (the patient) – that’s not designing for patients. Dr. Adrienne Boissy
Overall all of these different examples, the takeaway are the same: Don’t do anything without patient input.
Why This Matters:
As mentioned earlier in this article, a patient engagement strategy by the Cleveland Clinic follows two of our 2017 healthcare trends: Get Involved and Earlier Involvement.
Get Involved – The shift to outcomes-based metrics has finally put the spotlight on the member of the healthcare team most able to drive persistency and commitment: the patient. Providers are making significant investments in patient engagement and activation programs.
Earlier Involvement – Many pharmaceutical companies are giving patients a greater role in influencing development and commercialization strategies by creating models that examine every decision through the lens of the ultimate end user.
As both of these trend summaries state, the end user – the patient – is the core focus and getting them involved (first trend) early and often (second trend) is critical to positive outcomes. While this may seem like a no brainer, with organizations as large as The Cleveland Clinic it is great to see this as a strategic goal within the entire system to help drive consistency across all patient touch points.
You can download and read more about both of these healthcare trends and many more we are following in 2017 here.
