Becker's Hospital Review

53 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING 2 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING SPONSORED BY Every person has a unique story: How Human Understanding TM is transforming patients' and consumers' healthcare experiences R esearch published by NRC Health indicates that, when compared to other services, twice as many people say being treated as a unique person is important in healthcare. Yet only 38 percent say that the personalized healthcare experience they want actually occurs. To learn how hospitals and health systems are reinventing their approach to the patient experience using concepts like Human Understanding, Becker's Hospital Review recently spoke with three patient experience experts: • Ryan Donohue, strategic advisor, NRC Health • Chris DuFresne, vice president, digital and marketing operations, Minneapolis-based Allina Health • Gregory Makoul, PhD, chief transformation officer, NRC Health Healthcare must focus more broadly on the consumer experience So much of the work of health and wellness happens outside the sliver of time that a person spends receiving traditional healthcare services. Yet, many organizations still focus exclusively on the limited time spent in the physician's office. "Health systems, from a clinical care perspective, have done well at understanding the human component of their work," Mr. DuFresne explained. "But they haven't done as well when it comes to the consumer perspective, specifically, making it as easy to get care as it is to book a flight, reserve a table, or purchase a product." This is problematic because people have high expectations for their healthcare providers. According to Mr. Donohue, "Consumers expect healthcare providers to meet or exceed their expectations. NRC Health compares consumer expectation across industries — and consumers hold healthcare to a much higher standard than any other sector. Yet, other industries consistently do a better job closing the gap between consumer expectations and the actual consumer experience. Healthcare must learn how to understand consumers' expressed and unexpressed needs and then build services or products using understanding as the foundation." One of the obstacles to improving the consumer experience in healthcare is that most provider organizations don't solicit feedback from people until their episode of care is over. "The traditional approach is to measure experience after an encounter or after someone leaves the hospital," Dr. Makoul said. "Limiting the scope to asking, 'How did we do?' puts organizations in a reactive stance where they can't do anything but apologize if things didn't go well and try to make sure that problems don't happen again." Mr. Donohue agreed. "I think every healthcare leader and doctor would agree that we want to meet expectations, but if we find those out after the fact, it's too late. When we don't ask about expectations up front, we simply rely on blind luck during patient encounters which is not a very good strategy." Focusing on consumer experiences rather than patient experiences represents a significant mindset change. However, it's something that leading health systems are thinking about. They are discovering that they must look differently at multiple stakeholders. "It's not just about the patient in the bed. It's about the adult child who's a caregiver for their parent who is a patient," Mr. DuFresne said. "That adult child will help the patient recover after a hospital stay as much or more than anyone in the healthcare system. How do we think about them in the work we do? That's why we look at consumers, not just patients." Every person has a story — and every story must be heard Human Understanding takes a much broader view than clinical care alone. "Whether we are in front of a doctor, at home, at work or out living our lives, we are human beings," Mr. Donohue said. "Human Understanding focuses on everything that an individual is and how healthcare can serve them as a whole person." NRC Health's Human Understanding program is a systematic approach to help health system partners understand what matters to the people they serve. It focuses on how consumers expect healthcare to work and what is best for them. Taken together, the program covers five strategic areas: experience, marketing, institutes, reputation and workforce. "If you think about experience, we want to know what matters to every patient as a person, starting before they come in for care," Dr. Makoul said. "We generate an inSIGHT Summary that members of the care team can view within the electronic medical records – it takes about 15 seconds to review, and we have published results showing double-digit gains in the proportion

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