Why Patient Experience is Crucial to Healthcare Innovation

Health systems are investing heavily in the patient experience. At Springfield Clinic, that strategy is critical to continued sustainability in a complex market.

Despite recent missteps by disruptors in the primary care space, the greatest threat to health systems and hospitals is retail healthcare. That’s why it’s important not to overlook the patient experience.

And patients don’t want to deal with paperwork, especially when they’re not feeling well.

Healthcare organizations are using digital health tools and telehealth portals to reduce the administrative burden on patients seeking care and shorten the time between entry and treatment. They’re also embracing remote patient monitoring and other platforms that bring care directly to the patient.

For an industry that traditionally waits for patients to come to them, it’s a new strategy.

“[Healthcare] is a very antiquated process,” says Zach Kerker, chief brand and advocacy officer at Springfield Clinic. “From how you schedule appointments, to how you complete processes in order to get in to see your physician, to coming into the office and having your last name shouted at you and being marched through a room of people, it’s a cold cattle-call-like experience.”

The Illinois clinic, comprising more than 650 physicians and roughly 80 specialties, is addressing engagement with a patient experience department, led by Kerker, who joined the health system in 2018 after a career in sports reporting and digital sports development.

[Also read: The Exec: Technology in Patient Experience Is a Strategy, Not a Crutch.]

Kerker is acutely aware of the inroads made by Amazon and others in fashioning a retail healthcare experience that focuses on convenience and accessibility. Today’s consumers, he says, favor that experience over the visit to a doctor’s office, clinic, or hospital. When they’re sick, he says, all they want is care.

That’s why health systems and hospitals are prioritizing their innovation efforts on making healthcare more personal. They’re investing in strategies and technology that reduce the paperwork and improve scheduling processes, including more intuitive patient portals and tools that allow patients to schedule their own appointments online.

It’s not an easy investment to make, given the trying times for many hospitals and health systems trying to stay in the black.

“It’s difficult to do because the economics of healthcare are very difficult right now,” Kerker notes. “But what I would say is it is an investment and it does bear fruit, and if you want longevity in a world where everybody can give it to you quick and easy, who’s going to give you their heart? Who’s going to show up and be emotionally invested with you? Is going to matter in this space.”

The results of that strategy are seen in improved patient satisfaction scores, as measured by surveys and valued by the Joint Commission, among others. Kerker says those efforts are helping Springfield Clinic keep their patients and attract consumers in a complex healthcare environment.

[Aso read: Exploring New Opportunities With the Chief Patient Experience Officer.]

Kerker says that engagement strategy actually begins before the patient sets foot in the hospital. Supported by digital health tools, the health system reaches out to a patient before an appointment to gather information, including insurance details and all data pertaining to the visit.

“So when you walk in the door, we’re welcoming you,” Kerker says. “You’re walking in and we’re not demanding information from you, which is not a particularly warm experience. We’re asking you quite literally what can we do to help you and care for you today?”

To make that possible, Springfield Clinic partnered with Health Note to handle patient self-scheduling, intake and clinical documentation and integrate data collection with the health system’s athenahealth EHR. The two had first worked together in 2021, creating a digital front door for a small, rural urgent care facility; that project saw a bump in patient satisfaction scores and a sharp increase in at-home completion of forms and led to a much larger installation in 2022.

Kerker sees technology partnerships as a key to success. Health systems and hospitals don’t have the expertise or the resources to develop and manage their digital footprint, so they need partners to handle the details. This also gives leadership more time for focus on change management.

“The most ironic part about this is that people understandably expect that technology reduces the human interaction,” he points out. “But what we’ve tried to do is use technology to complement a better human experience.”

A challenge for many health systems is finding a digital health platform that can accommodate the nuances of different specialties and departments, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach. Kerker advises sitting down with the vendor to map out how a patient would access each department or specialist, and what protocols would be needed to support that journey.

That’s where the retail industry has a head start. Companies like Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have the consumer experience figured out, whereas healthcare has to catch up.

 “We are behind most industries in adopting this technology,” Kerker notes. And while some of the bigger disruptors are having problems figuring out healthcare, he says, healthcare leaders shouldn’t be lulled into complacency.

They “are very smart and they will figure these things out,” he says.

Healthcare organizations have an advantage over disruptors in their history of caregiving, but that can only go so far. Kerker says hospitals and health systems need to build on those relationships by making the healthcare experience more modern and convenient. That’s why staff and clinicians at Springfield Clinic are encouraged to greet patients at the door, call them by their first names, thank them for coming in today, and ask what can be done to make their visit better.

Kerker says the patient experience will improve as the technology gets better, especially as new tools like AI speed up the process.

“We’re at the doorstep of kind of growing out of that stage of clunkiness in the technology side and into a more fluid experience,” he says.