How does patient experience differ from Customer Experience? In essence, they are the same; the lessons learned in Customer Experience can be applied to patient experience. However, the nature of caring for a patient has its peculiarities, not the least of which is the duty of care that any healthcare provider must and generally prides itself on providing. Unfortunately, far too many healthcare organizations overlook a crucial aspect of patient care: the emotional experience. A good number of them recognize this but don’t know how to go about systematically addressing the emotional experience, which leads to improved clinical outcomes.
One such case is the work we did with Houston-based Memorial Hermann Hospital System (MHHS). The hospital became an award-winning patient experience leader after teaming with us. We will share this terrific success story in a webinar on July 21. The webinar, which will demonstrate how well our applications work in the real world, will be co-presented by Rhonda Dishongh, director of customer relationship management at MHHS, and me. Rhonda and I worked together from the beginning of the project, and after all these years the payoff story is especially rewarding.
Like almost every hospital at the time, the biggest challenge facing MHHS was building value by attracting and keeping its insured patients. Memorial Hermann recognized that it needed to increase its patient satisfaction, which necessarily meant paying more attention to the emotional patient experience.
So how did Memorial Herman Hospital system, the largest non-profit health care system in Texas, create a dynamic patient experience? How can other organizations learn from it? It is all about emotions. Smart, qualified doctors can be found at every hospital, but tender staff, an encouraging atmosphere and holistic emotional support for the patient cannot. Patients go where they will be well cared for – not just physically, but emotionally.
Our webinar will highlight the approach Memorial Hermann took and the results they achieved, including a significant boost in patient satisfaction scores. The sum total of the MHHS patient experience became greater than the small steps it added to enhance the patient experience – so much so that at the end of our journey with MHHS, patient satisfaction scores jumped by 20 percent. We’ll discuss the principles that led MHHS to be successful in creating a high-value, emotionally satisfying patient experience.
After such success, the culture shift toward a patient-centric experience spread from the cancer, heart and lung service lines through the entire system. Now MHHS is able to perpetuate its own great patient experience without our formal interaction.
Register here to join us for an in-depth look at MHHS’s process. One element of the hospital’s patient experience journey is also documented as a case study in our book, The DNA of Customer Experience.