If you don’t follow David Chou on Twitter, then you’re missing out on some really great content. This is particularly true if you’re a healthcare leader. A good example of this was the following tweet that David shared:
Healthcare must create the same consumer experiences as other industries. We are not different #cio #cdo pic.twitter.com/YTgY42dzLu
— David Chou (@dchou1107) April 26, 2017
The topic of whether healthcare is different from other industries is an important one that’s worth discussing. The chart above and the research by McKinsey&Company would suggest that healthcare isn’t all that different from other industries. However, I think there’s a nuance in their reality check.
The nuance is that healthcare have similar expectations of healthcare as they do with other non-healthcare companies. However, that doesn’t assume that healthcare consumers act the same as they do in other industries.
There are great examples of this. When you’re in the back of an ambulance after a heart attack, you’re not acting like much of a consumer. They’re taking you to the hospital of their choice and you’re going to largely get the care that the ED feels you need. In what other industry does this occur? There are other examples like elective procedures in healthcare that are very much an experience like other industries.
What the study illustrated above does teach us is that even if the consumer decision making process in healthcare is different, there are core expectations that we have regardless of how we chose to interact with the healthcare system or not. There are some universal tenants and expectations that healthcare should remember:
- Providing great customer service
- Delivering on expectations
- Making life easier
- Offering great value
I’ve started to see more and more healthcare organizations worry about these tenants of a great patient experience. When you see it broken out like the above, it sounds so simple. Implementing the ideas can be amazingly tricky. However, this is exactly where I see healthcare headed.
