Elevating Access and the Consumer Experience

Higher Expectations Redefine the Health Care Landscape

Every patient or family member has a customer service story to tell from their experiences with the health care system. Many stories aren’t flattering. Earned or not, health care doesn’t have the same customer service reputation as many well-known brands in the retail world like Amazon, Apple or Ritz Carlton.

Historically, the consumer experiences underlying the reputation didn’t hurt provider organizations like hospitals, health systems and physician practices from clinical, financial or operational standpoints. The reasons ranged from clinical reputation, brand loyalty and unbreakable doctor-patient relationships to narrow-network health insurance benefits and geographic market advantages.

But those reasons are crumbling before the eyes of most provider organizations. New market entrants, nontraditional health care competitors, vertically integrated health care conglomerates, new patient care modalities, breakthrough medical technologies, innovative digital health technologies, new value-based reimbursement models and — most importantly — new consumer expectations are quickly redefining the health care landscape.

Why Elevate Patient Access and the Consumer Experience?

Guidehouse and the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) surveyed 144 provider executives for the firm’s 2024 Health System Digital and IT Investment Trends Report. The executives, mostly chief financial officers (CFOs), said that patient and provider feedback is directing them to improve the consumer experience through digital front doors and virtual care options.

Further, there is a growing sense of urgency among hospitals, health systems and physician practices to elevate the consumer experience and jump-start that journey by improving patient access.

READ MORE.

Case Study: Tampa General Hospital

Patient Access is Care Coordination

Learn how Tampa General Hospital built out its patient experience center to bring service standards up to the level of other fields and the results it has achieved in the first 13 months. The center addresses three workstreams: people, processes and technology.

READ MORE.

Case Study: Yale New Haven Health/Yale Medicine

Unleashing Supply to Meet Demand

Thanks to an enviable clinical reputation — buoyed by their affiliation with Yale University and its medical school — there always has been pent-up patient demand for care from the health system’s providers. Learn how the organization’s Access 365 initiative knocked down barriers to access and replaced them with the people, processes and technologies to give patients access to what they need at the first point of contact.

READ MORE.