You Can Have It All: Control Costs, Increase Payments AND Improve the Patient Experience

The following is an excerpt from our white paper, The Power of OmniChannel

For years, the healthcare industry has been determined to optimize patient engagement. Our take: the very concept of patient engagement is flawed and inadequate to meet the challenges ahead. The death of patient engagement—as we know it today—is just around the corner.

This will be a very good thing for patients and your organization. Traditional ideas about patient engagement have led many healthcare providers down the wrong path: seeking patients to be more engaged with caregivers. But that’s looking at patient engagement through a rearview mirror.

Instead, healthcare providers need to proactively engage with patients based on the patients’ experience—instead of trying to get patients to do what’s easiest for providers. This begins by re-thinking your journey map. Organizational journey maps that start with your company’s processes, structure or systems cannot lead you to a customer-centric outcome.

The distinction may seem too subtle to matter. This report should convince you otherwise. And forget about the “marketing funnel,” that time-honored idea that customers/patients follow a linear path to and through your organization. We now know that the patient experience doesn’t follow a uniformly predictable pattern. We also know that customers of all types care deeply about speed and flexibility, reliability and transparency, and competent interactions including empathetic care.

According to McKinsey & Company, “Companies seeking to keep pace with industry leaders must embark on an OmniChannel transformation—one that views touchpoints not in isolation but as part of a seamless customer journey. And since customer journeys aren’t simple and linear but a series of handoffs between traditional and digital channels that can vary significantly by customer [or patient] type, an effective strategy requires an in-depth understanding of what customers truly want.” (McKinsey & Company)

All of which brings us to the importance of understanding and embracing an OmniChannel communications approach with patients. It’s easy to confuse “multiple channels” with “OmniChannel,” but the difference is significant. An OmniChannel approach makes movement between interaction channels seamless in accordance with patient preferences and their actual behavior. And while that might sound complicated or expensive, new tools are making it easier and more cost-effective than ever. Many industries already are benefitting from an OmniChannel approach, which your organization can apply to the unique communication challenges in healthcare.

To understand how you can optimize everywhere by embracing an OmniChannel approach, click here to read the full white paper.