Imagine the last time you booked a flight. Most likely, you opened a mobile app or went online, entered your desired destination and time frames, and were presented with flight options to choose from. Aware of the costs and different options, you selected the itinerary that best met your needs.
Now imagine the last time you searched for a specialist to see a particular medical condition or booked an appointment with that physician. It probably wasn’t as easy as booking a flight. Seamless consumer experiences extend beyond airlines; retail, restaurants, and banks have adopted processes and technologies, many with self-service options, that allow consumers to access information and services when and how they choose. Even pockets of the broader healthcare industry, such as dentistry, long ago migrated to models that enable patients to easily manage their care right at their fingertips.
The fact is, consumer expectations transcend industries. Businesses are not just competing to provide the best experience in their category—they are contending to offer the best consumer experience possible.
Healthcare is not immune. With declining margins and new market entrants vying for the patient relationship, organizations must adopt a more consumer-centric service orientation and make it easy for patients, providers, and staff to access information, care, and support services at any point in the care journey. To remain competitive, healthcare organizations have to transform their core processes to create a seamless digital experience, and that starts with establishing the operational infrastructure to support and scale these initiatives.
THE FRAGMENTED HEALTHCARE EXPERIENCE
Given the way many health systems have evolved, consumer-facing services—an organization’s front-door entry points—have been supported in silos with minimal coordination between and within functions. The onus has been on consumers to navigate these complexities.
Let’s take a hypothetical patient, Jane, and walk through a relatively simple interaction with a typical health system. See figure 1.
Jane is referred from primary care to orthopedics and needs to coordinate imaging prior to her specialty consult. Jane has a question about the costs, and it takes several uncoordinated touch points to reach resolution. This assumes she follows through, which is not always the case and could result in missed or delayed care and network leakage. Provider organizations must make it easier for consumers and patients to get the support and care they need.
