Columbus, OH — A few of the favorites to hit our inboxes this week:
Three Trends Driving Healthcare Experiences
Henning Fischer – the man with the gnome over at Adaptive Path – uncovered three big trends driving change in healthcare experience:
“There is an economy-wide focus on repeatable, memorable experiences that match individuals’ wants and needs. When executed well, this increases customer loyalty and lowers service delivery costs over the long term. Good experiences tend to get copied…” Full article.
Shawna Polivka sent us this post from Nurse Sandra Lee, recounting what it’s like for both nurse and patient to struggle to manage a major life change:
“You showed me how to be a nurse tonight. Tonight the only human action I had left to do was to kneel down beside you, hand you a Kleenex, and say, “I am so, so sorry.” And crying with you, we try again. Full article.
Google’s ex-Chief Health Strategist Launches Startup, Smart Patients
Brian Dolan over at MobiHealthNews shares details on a new online community for cancer patients and their supporters announced at TEDMED:
“‘What we are primarily trying to do is help cancer patients and caregivers learn more effectively from each other,’ Google’s former Chief Health Strategist Roni Zeiger MD told MobiHealthNews in an interview before his talk at TEDMED. ‘It turns out when people get sick or their loved ones do, within a couple of months they become quite expert in their illness and they are really motivated to help each other’.” Full article.
On the National MS Society blog, Prize-winning poet Laurie Clements Lambeth shares an incredibly personal and powerful story about the cognitive challenges she’s experienced because of her MS:
“I couldn’t tie it together. Imagine two strands of yarn. One is the hours ticking by, time itself, and at 1:00 I had my appointment. Let’s put an imaginary pin down and call it 1:00. The other strand of yarn represents the amount of time needed to prepare and drive to 1:00. The problem is, in my head the two strands of yarn were very far apart, and parallel. I could not connect them. They were loose and felt tiny in my mind, like when my hand is weak or shaky and I can’t grasp a small object.” Full article.
Dr. Rob Lamberts, a primary care physician practicing in Georgia, tells his first-practice view of what patient engagement means and just how much stands in the way:
“Collaboration – the patient should be engaged, but in a two-way relationship. This means they not only should have access to their records, they should contribute to those records.” Full article.
The Robert Wood Johnson team shares their personal favorites from TEDMED 2013:
“Bhat’s work is also affecting my own thinking about how providers might be able to make the business case to health plans for providing some level of non-medical care.” Full article.
Why Every Ad Agency Should Have A Customer Experience Unit
Kelly Macaulay sent us this call-to-arms from the very like-minded Harlan Kennedy of Venables Bell & Partners about why every ad agency should be an experience expert:
“There’s research and there’s empathy. Sometimes the two coincide. Agency people tend to do both well. We go into people’s homes and go through their medicine cabinets and their trash and play fetch with their dogs. We recognize narratives and subtexts. We know how to interpret that pause before they answer the question. We feel their stress and revel in their successes. We know when they call bullshit. Customer experience starts with an understanding of the customer, and at good agencies, that discipline is baked into the culture.” Full article.
What are you reading?
Posted by: Leigh Householder
