Placing The Patient At The Center Of Healthcare

Placing The Patient At The Center Of Healthcare: "The fundamental issue is not technology at all, or even errant business processes. In fact, without some changes in the 'culture' of healthcare, new technology will accomplish little. Why? Because the relentless advance of technology by itself doesn't fix things. It never has. Technology is never more than an enabler of good business decisions. Absent a complete understanding of the business problem, any 'solution' will be flawed. The challenge facing healthcare today is, first and foremost, properly identifying the problems.

So what's the missing part of the equation? The 'voice of the customer.' Call it an appreciation of how the needs and expectations of today's consumer have changed, or an understanding of just how disappointed patients have become with the current healthcare process. Ultimately, it means caring about what's important to patients, first and foremost."

Patricia Seybold expressed these principals well in The Customer Revolution – How to Thrive When Customers are in Control. The key "customer-centered" principles she identifies have been adapted and paraphrased below for healthcare and patients specifically:

1. Create a compelling "brand personality."
2. Deliver a seamless experience to patients across channels and touch points
3. Care about patients and their goals
4. Measure what matters most – to patients
5. Value patients’ time
6. Place patient “DNA” [information] at the core of the system
7. Refine operational excellence
8. Design any new system or process with the expectation that it will need to evolve
9. Provide self-service access to services if possible, when and where the patient wishes.