Upgrade your patient experience. Keep patients coming back for life. Boost your net revenue.

Obviously we’re talking about quite an overhaul. But the beautiful part is you can start small – and get great gains from quick wins on your way to building out the whole thing.

Here’s where I would start if I were you:

1. Inventory all of the patient experience and patient satisfaction measurement tools in place at current – and combine them (in a manner that aligns with your mission) into a single management report. For the most part, healthcare executives are “measure and monitor” leaders, given the number of moving parts in a hospital, and if you’re not efficiently measuring and monitoring patient engagement – then you’re not going to capture the C-Suite’s attention over the longer term. Consultant’s note: You’ll be surprised how many different areas of your health system are measuring “satisfaction” in their own way.

2. Establish a multi-disciplinary task force (marketing, operations, clinical, technology) to determine the criteria of organizational value to be affected by a patient experience focus – this could include referral retention rates, readmission rates, higher net revenue per episode, patient lifetime value calculations, share of wallet, etc. Consultant’s note: it’s generally a good idea to have a clinical, a financial and a “satisfaction” goal to cover the landscape of executive leadership (and Board) interests.

3. Determine the first “use case” area for understanding, developing, improving and measuring patient experience. This could be an intense clinical area (e.g. cardiology), chronic diseases (e.g. diabetes), specific patient segments (e.g. Medicare ACO) or a particular facility (e.g. ambulatory care center). Map out the full patient interaction journey – from decision to care to follow up to payment – and institute specific improvements along every key step of that journey. Consultant’s note: this is where a “patient satisfaction” focus fails. Satisfaction looks backwards and tends to focus on only the clinical interactions. Experience deals with the entire journey, with particular focus on having the patient return.

These areas will get you great ROI in as little as a few weeks.

Put simply, a Patient Management Organization is an organization that has systematized patient experience to the point where patients get and stay healthier — and earns patients’ long-term loyalty because of it.

When you do a Patient Management Organization right, you become your patients’ first choice. And you create higher “emotional” switching costs for patients who feel taken care of.

Here’s a quick diagram of what a Patient Management Organization looks like:

These elements — plus ancillary elements that support the above — if executed with the passion of a startup business and the precision of a watchmaker, will create a market advantage that will be difficult to combat.

I pitched this idea to health systems 10 years ago, and here’s where we got caught up in conversation: “How are we, the health systems going to make this happen, when we can’t even get our related departments (finance and revenue cycle, clinical and IT, managed care and anybody) to work together?”

But a lot has happened between then and now.

New technology has enabled us to do things we couldn’t do 10 years ago. Particularly with health systems, particularly with CRMs, and particularly with the bolt-ons for patient experience.

Now, it’s not only feasible – but I believe this will be the price of admission for the healthcare industry within the next 5 years.

Besides the stories of other successful hospitals, there are also studies showing the power of these patient experience ideas.

[studies show] 39% increase in online payments by using more effective communication strategies (for instance, remapping communications to the protocols preferred by generation (millennials, Gen Z, baby boomers, etc.)

An organization in Atlanta remapped their communications and also captured 42% more referral retentions – that’s 42% more people coming back that were previously leaving.

27% of readmissions are prevented simply by using better communication strategies between the hospital and patient after discharge

70% of millennials will be more loyal to an organization that gives them a great experience

You probably have a garage mechanic you go to, that you trust. You know he’s going to do a good job because your experiences with him have built that trust. He treats you with respect and courtesy. His work is good and you know he’ll take care of you. So you refer this guy to your friends and family.

I have a relationship with a garage mechanic, and I trust them so much that I go to them instead of the dealership – even though the dealership is free.

People gravitate to the vendors they trust.

This is the exact thing we need for our medical needs. And the effect is actually magnified because our health is much more important to us than a car.

At Crowe, we’ve consulted with hundreds of hospitals – and we’re seeing that loyalty is the biggest missed opportunity in the healthcare industry.

The hospitals that are doing it…are thriving. The ones that aren’t…are seeing net revenue slowly dwindle, as someone else earns their patients’ loyalty.

So the goal of the Patient Management Organization is that patients will always think of you first, because your care is leaps and bounds better than other hospitals – and by “care” I don’t mean just the clinical care that get delivered. It’s also the care your patients feel when they way “they take care of me and my family” and “they care about me.”

Here are the 10 parts of transforming your organization into a Patient Management Organization:

Engagement with a patient in their environment on their personal medical journey.

Increased market share that comes from steering patients within the platform of providers and programs.

Command center operations whose responsibility is to direct the programs, information, and care delivery on a personalized basis.

Provider panels (physician, ancillary, acute, and digital) connected on a common platform to deliver coordinated patient care.

Interoperable patient data that compels a patient to remain “in the program.”

Digital technology that incorporates monitoring devices and other ease-of-use instances.

Managed care contracting that lets you efficiently coordinate healthcare while also focusing on prevention, wellness, and chronic disease management.

High patient engagement and satisfaction scores that create comfort and an emotional connection to our brand.

Financial performance that sustains the enterprise for generations of patients.

Efficient administration to support a cost structure that is affordable to patients.

When you start using cutting-edge technology to provide a patient experience that is dramatically better than your competition — your patients notice. And you can see it in your patient retention numbers.

Remember – patients don’t think episodically. Patients think about their lifetime medical journey, and they use that mindset to make decisions when episodes of illness occur. Do consumers purchase an article of clothing only to throw it away after wearing it once? No. They have their favorites – shoes, coats, skirts, shirts – that they wear frequently.

With a Patient Management Organization, each patient becomes worth exponentially more to you, because you’re capturing more of the patient’s lifetime value.

[Brian explains what would happen if they wanted to start an engagement — starting the engagement, first steps, timelines, and then what kinds of things would be built and by whom]

I do want to stress that this is NOT a sales call. I’m more in the business of relationship-building than hard-selling.

If I’ve given you a link to this page, it means I’m willing to hop on a 30-minute call, completely free, even if it’s just to get to know you.

My main goal for this call will be to answer whatever questions will be most valuable to you – whether that’s implementing a Patient Management Organization, helping you solve a business problem, or chatting about the future of the industry.

Click the link below to contact me:

[LINK]