Time to rethink, reassemble CX: HLTH 2022 takeaways

I went to HLTH 2022 in Las Vegas with a specific mission: identify what executives, innovators and investors are saying about consumer experience to determine what those insights reveal about the future of CX in healthcare. 

The backdrop to many conversations is that health plans and health systems are facing immense pressure to transform consumer engagement or risk losing patients or members and revenue to competitors already making such changes.  

Healthcare consumers are considering virtual options and many are willing to shop around for payers or providers with digital health tools. Conceptually, this isn’t new, but it is now becoming increasingly real. Big tech and retail are building next-generation healthcare experiences — and those companies already have seasoned CX expertise from delivering far more advanced user experiences in other sectors. What’s more, the point solutions healthcare organizations are investing in thus far are creating information silos. 

My takeaway from HLTH? Healthcare organizations need to prioritize building next-generation healthcare CX to engage patients more effectively and keep pace with big tech and retail. Not only will this transform the way in which they engage with their customers, but it will also enable them to effectively integrate existing point solutions and data sources. In order for healthcare organizations to prepare for this rapidly approaching future state, they need to follow three critical steps: 

• Understanding evolving consumer demand
• Building models for hybrid whole-person care
• Deploying platforms to make data actionable

Understanding evolving consumer demand

As basic as it sounds, knowing what consumers want is a necessary first step to engagement. Technology companies have mastered it via AI and analytics. The retail sector has been focused on consumer behavior and expectations since before the turn of the century — remember the old adage about placing diapers next to beer to increase sales¹ of both? 

In healthcare, patient and member expectations are rapidly evolving alongside the pace of digital transformation. Perhaps the most significant threat new digital tools pose is empowering people to take their data and seek care where it best suits them. To that end, many individuals are now looking for experiences akin to Netflix, Uber or Peloton, with a focus on convenience, cost and the seamless flow of information between various aspects of their lives. 

In one session, speakers pointed to increasing alignment between what patients and members want and what is also advantageous for healthcare organizations to deliver. Services that onboard and engage people with multiple chronic conditions by removing barriers to access and curating benefits, for instance, hold the promise of reducing long-term costs for individuals, health plans and employers. But achieving this level of engagement requires personalization and digital tools to guide individuals through their health journeys rather than simply providing a list of 150 options and leaving it up to consumers to decide. 

Ultimately, executives said it’s more effective to design care services or insurance benefits based on people’s actual behavior instead of what a health system/plan/employer thinks they might need.

Building models for hybrid whole-person care

During a show floor discussion, speakers explained that while consumers are seeking new experiences, health systems and health plans are realizing the strategic advantages of meeting that demand by delivering integrated virtual and in-person experiences. But to succeed hybrid services must improve engagement, not increase frustration, and that is both a challenge and an opportunity. 

Deloitte’s 2022 Survey of US Healthcare Consumers², in fact, illustrates the challenge. In 2022, 42 percent of consumers participated in a virtual visit, up from just 17 percent in 2018. Yet 57 percent of respondents who engaged in a virtual visit indicated that the experience was not of the same quality as in-person visits. 

A profound opportunity resides within that disconnect. Health systems and health plans that establish hybrid models for whole-person care – encompassing multiple chronic conditions, behavioral health, fitness, prevention and wellness – will build a massive competitive advantage. This will enable them to more effectively and frequently engage consumers, improve outcomes for individuals and populations, increase satisfaction rates among patients and clinicians, reduce expenses and drive revenue to bolster the bottom line.  

Delivering whole-person health at scale, however, requires executives to lead enterprise-wide CX transformation initiatives. Today’s fragmented and frustrating care needs to be modernized into seamless, integrated and personalized services that engage patients and members not just once or twice a year but on a regular basis.

Deploying platforms to make data actionable

Another gem of information that was articulated at HLTH: “The healthcare industry is not suffering from a lack of data. Rather, organizations are failing to put that information to work.” 

While health systems have invested millions of dollars, and in the largest cases billions, into EHRs, many have worked toward similar goals for years, notably health information exchange, population health and patient-generated data. Yet EHRs remain isolated systems of record with little evidence of evolving into systems of engagement, let alone the systems of insight that enable organizations to understand the populations they serve. 

Comprehensively understanding evolving consumer demands and transforming CX with hybrid whole-person care models will require integrating disparate information sources, including EHR data, and point solutions into a modern platform.  

That healthcare CX platform, in turn, should be an open architecture supported by an ecosystem of innovators, third-party app developers, ISVs, systems integrators and novel tech partnerships. This strategy will accelerate emerging technologies and speed-to-value while reducing the risks associated with longer technology deployments.

What’s next: powering meaningful consumer engagement

Leaving HLTH, I was struck by another phrase I encountered during a session: The time has come ‘to rethink and reassemble’ the healthcare consumer experience. 

That CX transformation begins with understanding the ways consumer expectations are evolving, embracing opportunities to improve outcomes and increasing revenue by engaging individuals with virtual and in-person care services.

What the industry needs right now is next-generation engagement: A new tech stack for CX and healthcare.

¹Swoyer, S. (2016, November 16). Beer and diapers: The impossible correlation. Transforming Data with Intelligence. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://tdwi.org/articles/2016/11/15/beer-and-diapers-impossible-correlation.aspx

²Fera, B., Abrams, K., Shah, U., Varia, H., & Bhatt, D. J. (2022, September 21). Tapping virtual health’s full potential. Deloitte Insights. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/health-care/virtual-health-survey.html