Healthcare consumerism is defined as the healthcare consumer increasingly being in control of the experiences that constitute a healthcare journey, empowered as an informed, knowledgeable stakeholder throughout a coordinated care path.
The trend is largely the result of consumers being in control of their own health data through wearables, apps, telehealth visits and a general expectation that the consumer owns the relationship with other stakeholders. It’s a similar customer-centric mindset as in other industries, which recognize that the customer is in control of the journey throughout digital and physical channels. The elevation of the customer, or the healthcare consumer, is driven by an acceleration of digital-first experiences, as well as an expectation for a seamless, personalized experience at every touchpoint.
In the Deloitte 2020 Survey of Health Consumers, research shows that consumers are becoming increasingly active and engaged in their healthcare, measured by such metrics as an increasing use of technology and apps to measure and maintain health, and a growing belief that using technology such as wearables helps drive positive behavior change. Research even saw a sharp increase in patients comfortable telling their doctors that they disagree with them – so they are now asserting their control.
A Differentiated Experience Starts with Data
Findings from the Deloitte survey are consistent with the healthcare consumerism movement. One offshoot of consumers taking more control of an individual healthcare journey is expectations for new types of engagement; now in control, consumers expect seamless, personalized experiences.
In the Deloitte survey, asked to define the “ideal healthcare experience,” 44 percent of consumers said it was when a doctor or provider “listens to me and shows they care about me.” Other top responses were when a doctor spends time with them and doesn’t rush through a visit (42 percent), when a doctor explains every step during an exam and clearly explains follow-up care (39 percent) and when doctors and other caregivers communicate with one another and coordinate treatment (25 percent), showing that expectations for their doctor extend to the entire healthcare organization.
Providing a personalized healthcare experience, and coordination between stakeholders requires having the right data. A provider must know everything there is to know about a patient. To become an invested partner in a consumer’s healthcare journey, a provider should have more than clinical data. In a pandemic, what is the patient’s tolerance for risk? What are the patient’s preferences as far as channels of engagement? What are the applicable social determinants of health? What does IoT data reveal about a chronic condition?
To provide the personalized experience that a healthcare consumer expects, providers must have a consistent line of sight into everything that constitutes the healthcare journey; claims and clinical data, IoT and sensor data; preferences and behaviors.
Data in Exchange for a Personalized Experience
For the healthcare consumer, the expectation for a personalized experience comes with an understanding that they must share the data that makes personalization possible. In a Deloitte Healthcare Consumer Response to COVID-19 Survey, conducted in April, there was a sharp increase in the percentage of consumers willing to share personal health data with caregivers.
The research showed that 60 percent of patients are willing to share their data with a personal provider, versus 53 percent in 2018. Likewise, there was a 6 percent increase in consumers willing to share health data with payers, and a 6 percent increase in those willing to share data with leading national healthcare providers.
By sharing data, the healthcare consumer becomes even more in control of a healthcare journey, leading to an even more seamless, personalized experience – a win/win for the consumer and caregivers.
Prepare for Consumerism: Three Generations
Delivering personalized healthcare experiences is not an end in and of itself, but rather a tactic to ultimately drive superior outcomes – whether health outcomes or revenue outcomes (acquisition, retention).
Leading healthcare organizations, to prepare for the growing trend toward healthcare consumerism, recognize that personalization of the healthcare experience is the default starting point toward achieving the desired outcomes.
Gartner frames this preparation as three different generational capabilities of healthcare engagement. Each of the generations describe the levels of a healthcare organization’s preparedness for helping guide an active, engaged consumer through the healthcare journey.
Generation One – where most healthcare organizations are today – is receiving consumer data and optimizing an engagement on a single business unit or process. Generation Two is providing the experience across the entire enterprise, such as an insurer leveraging the same data to optimize for acquiring Medicare members and closing care gaps – which may be two business units acting as one on behalf of the healthcare consumer. Generation Three refers to the entire healthcare ecosystem, breaking down traditional siloes between payers and providers that cloud a single view into the healthcare consumer and create a fragmented experience.
To move from Generation One to Three lies in technology, specifically, as Gartner suggests, a Healthcare Consumer Engagement Hub that ties data and systems together, allows personalized, contextual engagement across all channels and between all business units and processes.
In a follow-up blog, we will explore the three generations of personalized engagement in more detail, and show why data-driven healthcare organizations are choosing the Redpoint rgOne platform as their healthcare consumer engagement hub of record to drive superior health and revenue outcomes.