Recently, I was fortunate to spend a week at Becker’s 9th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM conference surrounded by the foremost healthcare leaders from some of the most innovative healthcare systems across the country. The event highlighted both the exciting advancements and the challenges healthcare systems are facing – there were sessions focused on everything from digital transformation and the blending of marketing and IT, to more in-depth discussions on strategies to improve patient experience or revenue cycle management.
Rising supply costs, an aging workforce and the shift toward value-based care have put tremendous pressure on these organizations. This shift, often referred to as the “retailization of healthcare," reflects patients' growing preference for convenience, ease of access and transparency in care. As a result, health systems across the globe are finding themselves needing to reevaluate their entire patient experience and make some drastic changes.
Let's dive into some of the key topics and innovations showcased at the conference that are reshaping patient experience in healthcare.
The Challenge of Resetting Patient Experience Strategies
The topic of “resetting your patient experience strategy” is a complicated one. Especially as health systems are trying to transform their digital infrastructure and improve revenue cycle management amid financial constraints and lowered profitability. When you also factor in how quickly patient preference for healthcare is changing, it becomes critical to have a sound data infrastructure and tools to both process and analyze at scale. It’s fair to say that all hospitals and healthcare systems, whether focused on primary, secondary, tertiary or quaternary care, all want positive patient experiences.
Innovative Approaches to Patient Experience: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
I was able to attend a session hosted by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Alan Dubovsky, vice president and chief patient experience officer, and Max Nicholson, associate director, patient experience. They did an amazing job highlighting the cutting-edge innovation in data collection, analysis and insights generated by their program. One of the most impactful quotes from the session was, “Patient experience is not new and if it’s done right, you can see improvements across clinical outcomes, workforce and operations.” Throughout the course of the week, there were countless stories told of technology adaptation and small cumulative victories.
Alan and Max’s team isn’t large, but they utilize a suite of technology and tools to build “experience data panels” and analyze them at scale through AI programs to generate insights to improve their patient experience. AI is crucial to their practice and allows faster processing, enabling them to optimize quickly. This is truly a testament to keeping pace with changing healthcare demand. Their efforts in this capacity have allowed Cedars-Sinai to create patient experience feedback loops. A more tactical example of their success was through targeting patients who aren’t likely to leave high marks within a review.
Digital Marketing Strategies in Healthcare
Similarly, in the realm of advertising and marketing, I want to highlight a few unique communications targeting and measurement strategies I think are at the forefront of both new technology and innovation. I also had the chance to listen to Ken Chaplin, system chief marketing officer at City of Hope, and Andrew Chang, chief marketing officer at UChicago Medicine, during a session titled “Strategic Growth from a Digital Marketing Perspective.” Andy’s team has built a messaging infrastructure using an advanced HIPAA-compliant customer data platform (CDP) to better serve both patients and teams. With Ken’s team, they are leveraging premium cross-channel measurement partners that hold currency-grade data sets for U.S. household measurement and optimization.
The Rise of AI in Healthcare Marketing
As I approached my last session of the week, I was able to hear from some amazing healthcare marketing leaders who spoke on “Early Generative AI Use for Health Systems: Marketing,” where the speakers engaged on topics of AI, data and segmentation and how they are being used in marketing to patients. It’s no surprise, but AI was a significant topic at the event. This panel highlighted use cases centered around general AI usage and policies, but the underlying conversation was about how to use it to enhance your data and the processing of it in a HIPAA compliant way. Systems are already using AI to transcribe calls and summarize patient dispositions. They are also using scheduling and doctor availability data to dictate marketing spending. Because of AI, healthcare marketers have been able to more easily garner deeper segmentation into doctors and specialties for referrals. Another really interesting technology being used that is new but easy to implement is ambient listening in patient rooms. It was one of the most talked about topics at the conference and sentiment was largely favorable.
Overall, it was a really enjoyable experience at Becker’s and these are just a few key takeaways on how healthcare leaders and marketers are leveraging innovation to create or improve upon repeatable, positive experiences for their patients. Healthcare marketers are feeling pressure from market conditions, changing consumer demand, and organizational leadership to find ways to continually improve patient experience. More than ever before, if you’re not innovating in patient experience, you’re falling behind. Now and moving forward, healthcare systems will be centered on this and creating connections of apathy toward their brand to maintain loyalty and market share.
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