Session Recap from Becker's PX & Marketing Virtual Event, Part 2

I am doing a two-part series recapping my session at one my favorite virtual events, the Becker's Healthcare Digital Innovation, Patient Experience and Marketing Virtual Event. 

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about why to choose an existing foundational framework for your mobile engagement app and digital front door. We also discussed the 80% of tools and features that are pretty common to most healthcare organizations when it comes to patient experience and meeting patient expectations. Now onto part 2. How do you find the 20% of things that are unique to your organization?

In a recent report on engaging your community, healthcare marketing executives shared insights on engaging their communities and specific things to think about, including:

• Human-centered design (HCD): HCD means starting with the consumer’s needs and wants in mind rather than starting with what we want to tell consumers, which can result in incorrect assumptions. 

• Care coordination: Care coordination is helping consumers find the appropriate care unique to them and making it easy to take the next step in their health care journey. 

• Health equity: Marketing teams need to solicit as diverse inputs as possible rather than relying on the same types of people over and over again. Reaching an underserved population often takes more time and money—and thinking creatively. 

• Better data governance and CRM that spans the continuum of care: Healthcare marketing experts are working to bring customer relationship management up to the level of other industries. There is a need for tools to track and serve a patient’s health care journey from beginning to end—while trying to avoid overwhelming and confusing consumers with too many apps. 

One healthcare executive addressing digital strategy today recommends focusing on outside in thinking because it’s not about what you want to tell patients, it’s about what patients are asking you and what their journey really looks like. When you take the time to truly engage all your audiences and map their experiences that’s when you can see what may be unique to your organization.

There are many ways to gather the insights to map these journeys.

• Patient surveys and HCAHPS

• Focus groups

• Patient/family advisory councils

• Staff councils or surveys

• Ask your peers

Once you have mapped the journey, you can confirm the 80% of things you know everyone needs. Then, see what else stands out as the other 20%. It may be things we only see in the top performing organizations like digital wayfinding. Or it could be something truly unique like a service that is only available at your location. Ideally, the foundational framework for your digital front door allows you to add these things easily to truly customize your patients’ experience.