The term “consumer experience” has become more prevalent in healthcare over the past couple of years. Many Health IT companies and organizations use the term interchangeably with “patient experience”. That is a mistake according to an expert panel at the 2022 HIMSS conference. The two are not the same.
Patients Are Not Homogenous
Day 1 of HIMSS featured a number of pre-conference symposia. For the past few years, I have had the good fortune of attending the one dedicated to the topic of Patient Experience. For me, this pre-conference is the best way to kick-off the annual HIMSS conference.
This year the opening panel on the State of Patient Experience (which I had the good fortune to moderate) explored the topic of consumer vs patient experience and featured:
- Grace Cordovano. Patient Advocate and Founder of Enlightening Results
- Brian Martinez, Patient Care Administrator at Orlando Health
- Paul Torrey, Head of WW Consumer Health Solutions at Amazon Web Services
“The word ‘patient’ is one of the most confusing in healthcare,” stated Cordovano. “Not every patient is the same.”
According to Cordovano, patients fall along a spectrum of categories:
- Pro-active wellness seekers who are usually healthy
- Those with an acute encounter (ie: broken bone, food related illness)
- People with a chronic illness
- Individuals with a life-altering, life-limiting condition
- Patients needing end-of-life care
“All of these categories are patient experiences,” explained Cordovano. “Now add in SDOH – no matter how healthy you want to be, how engaged or proactive you want to be, if you are struggling and living in a neighborhood without easy access to healthcare, in a food desert, with no childcare or transportation, it’s very hard and you are perpetually in survival mode no matter what category you are in. So if you are not struggling with SDOH, and if you are in category #1 or #2, you could be considered a consumer of healthcare if the stars align.”
In other words, there is only a small portion of patients who could be considered consumers of healthcare.
Consumers vs Patients vs Customers
“A patient is already someone who is in your care,” said Martinez. “At that point, they no longer have a choice, they are there in your care looking to get better. A consumer is someone that is seeking care or preventative care, not going undergoing an acute episode, and they have an opportunity to choose where they go.”
Martinez shared that Orlando Health does not use either patient or consumer. Instead they look to improve the overall “customer experience” where the customer includes patients, their families, and even caregivers. “It’s our job to ensure all our customers have the most seamless experience possible and that we connect all the dots for them.”
Torrey agreed with both Martinez and Cordovano: ‘There is a distinct difference between consumer and patient experience.”
Which term to use?
The consensus of the panel was the term consumer experience applies very narrowly to a small segment of the overall patient population. They agreed that improving healthcare by providing more consumer-like experiences is a noble goal, but that it should not completely overshadow the effort to improve the broader patient experience.
There was unvoiced agreement that the applying consumer experience as a blanket term for all patients, marginalized those who have very little choice for their care. It will be interesting to see if Health IT companies wake up to this realization and change the way they talk about their offerings.
