Thoughtform

Innovating the patient experience isn’t easy. From the difficulty of satisfaction surveying, to regulatory constraints, to the #healthcare system’s overall resistance to change, it can feel almost impossible to build something that truly improves patients’ quality of life. But often, creating an impactful patient experience doesn’t mean completely reinventing the wheel. A lot of positive change can be made simply by organizing your teams around a singular focus. And for that, you need an ethos. In the same way an individual’s personal ethos guides their actions, the ethos for a patient experience is a high-level guiding concept that shapes its development and execution. It captures the essence of how you will fulfill patients’ fundamental needs, and translates that into actionable principles. See our five-step process to developing an ethos for your next #patientexperience.

At least 1 in 5 US adults currently lives with obesity. With such a prevalent condition, why then does the US healthcare system know so little about how to treat people with obesity well? #Weightbias is dehumanizing and damaging to patients with obesity. It often causes physicians to believe that obesity is a person’s only health issue—and that every other medical problem they’re experiencing is the result of this disease. This not only leads to poor physical and psychological outcomes, it also further marginalizes people with obesity in society. On this episode of Creative Change, we sat down with some of the leaders in improving how the healthcare system treats people with obesity: James Zervios, Vice President and Chief of Staff for the Obesity Action Coalition, and Ted Kyle, emeritus board member of the OAC, and Principal and Founder of ConscienHealth.?Their work has impacted the lives of countless people with #obesity by driving #transformation in both the culture and the medical community. Changing how doctors and the general public view and treat people with obesity is a monumental task—and the OAC is leading the charge. Listen to the full conversation at the link below! https://lnkd.in/efhRJZHw

The traditional one-size-fits-all model of healthcare delivery leaves many patient populations out in the cold. Men, for instance, are 33% less likely to go to the doctor than women are. There are many?efforts to understand the factors that play into this: cultural expectations, care models, economic concerns, and more. But what if we didn’t stop at understanding what the problem is. What if we designed a solution? On the episode of “Creative Change,” we sat down with Sophie Elias, Head of Strategy and Operations at University Hospitals Cutler Center for Men. The Cutler Center, a new innovative #menshealth center nested under the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, is changing the way men think about their health by creating a patient experience designed around their unique needs and motivations. Shifting the culture of masculinity is a complex process that requires both macro and micro level changes. But according to Sophie, to drive a culture of change on the outside, you have to establish a culture of change within. Listen to the full interview here! https://lnkd.in/gAmm5eb2 #organizationaltransformation?#creativechange?University Hospitals Urology Institute

We are so proud of Strategist Gwyn Cready for representing Thoughtform at this year’s ObesityWeek? alongside the Obesity Action Coalition. This important work presents the co-creation and validation of an ideal primary care experience for people with obesity. Over the last year, we have partnered closely with the OAC, and worked with people with obesity to understand the difficulties and barriers they experience in seeking healthcare and co-design ways to solve these pain points to create a more welcoming healthcare experience. Then we partnered with Kristal Lyn Brown, PhD, MSPH, at Drexel University and Kimberly Gudzune, MD, MPH, FTO, Chief Medical Officer of the American Board of Obesity Medicine Foundation to validate our findings among a wider group of people with obesity. This week, Gwyn Cready traveled to San Antonio to present our co-created healthcare model to the broader obesity care community at the Obesity Week annual conference. We're excited to be a part of moving this important conversation forward, and working to make the healthcare experience more accessible for all.

Thoughtform has a reputation for excellent customer experience design, but this marks a first for us. Thoughtform strategists Gwyn Cready and Kate Schmiedicker partnered with the Obesity Action Coalition and people with obesity to co-design an ideal primary care experience for people with obesity, and our work is being presented next week at ObesityWeek?, the preeminent international conference for obesity researchers and clinicians. Some people with obesity are reluctant to go to their doctor—the furniture can be uncomfortable; they don’t like to be weighed; and their doctor can be less than empathetic. Thoughtform and the Obesity Action Coalition worked with people with obesity to identify pain points and think through ways to remove those barriers and create a more welcoming experience. Then we partnered with Kristal Lyn Brown, PhD, MSPH, at Drexel University and Kimberly Gudzune, MD, MPH, FTO, Chief Medical Officer of the American Board of Obesity Medicine Foundation to validate our findings among a wider group of people with obesity. We were thrilled to have the abstracts for each part of our research—the co-creation of an ideal primary care experience and the validation—accepted by ObesityWeek. We hope our findings will make #healthcare more approachable for people with #obesity. Do you have a #customerexperience that needs to be improved? Would you benefit from sharing your findings with a broader audience? Reach out. Thoughtform can help can help.

In a rapidly changing market like healthcare, a brand can seem out of date in as little as a few years. As the organization evolves and market trends change, colors no longer look fresh, taglines seem off-base, and brand names can fall out of step with the group’s mission. HM Health Solutions (HMHS) is a market-leading provider of advanced smart automation and #healthtech solutions to health plans and providers—but their brand perception wasn't living up to this forward-thinking promise. Thoughtform led a #branddevelopment process that deeply involved the HMHS team at every stage. Together, we laid the groundwork for meaningful discussion, evaluated creative concepts, and brought it all together into a cohesive new brand that fully reflects the organization’s capabilities. See how our unique #strategicbranding process forged strong alignment and excitement among the entire HMHS team—now operating under their new name:?enGen.

When it comes to customer experience, nearly half of all companies are stabbing in the dark. That’s right: recent data suggest that around 42% of companies develop their customer experience strategies without actually listening to their customers. Instead, they rely on “experience” and “institutional knowledge” to guide their strategy. “We know what our customers want,” they say. “We’re the experts. We’ve been serving them for years.” But the truth is: You can’t develop an effective customer experience without listening to your customers. It’s just not possible. Customer wants and needs are based on a variety of constantly evolving economic and cultural factors. Which means not only do you have to listen to your customers at the moment of strategy development, you have to be in a constant posture of listening throughout the implementation and beyond to make sure you’re staying ahead of their needs. In other words, customer listening isn’t just an activity. It’s a lifestyle. Now maybe it makes sense why nearly half of all companies would rather rely on internal expertise. Changing your organizational culture to be truly customer-centric requires more than just a few surveys. In our 40+ years in business, we’ve learned a lot about what it takes to help an organization build a growth-driving #customerexperience. From deeply understanding your customers, to designing an implementable #CXstrategy, to creating the kind of internal buy-in that incentivizes your employees to drive it forward with enthusiasm. And it all starts by opening the lines of communication with your customers. What do you think is the biggest benefit (or headache) of #customerlistening?

Thoughtform is happy to announce that Monica Rizzo has joined us as a design intern for the Fall of 2024! We sat down with Monica to talk about her many design co-ops, her interest in true crime, and her love of “memory collecting.” #designinternships #designthinking #designjobs

Are your Customer Experience and Brand Experience working against each other? How do you close the gap between strategy and reality? What’s the difference between a change that fails and one that sticks? If you’re like us, questions like these tend to keep you up at night—in a fun way. In fact, we think about them so much we decided to start a newsletter about them. Every month, delivered directly to your email inbox, you'll receive a curated collection of the latest thought leadership on topics like the difference between branding and positioning, the most effective CX measurement tools, how to futureproof your workforce, and much more (with a few fun extras thrown in, of course). All you have to do is sign up below. And don’t worry, it’s only once a month, so we won’t clutter up your inbox. #customerexperience #cx #cxstrategy

If you want your business to grow, you have to grow with your customers. As time moves on and culture evolves, customer preferences and expectations evolve too. And if you aren’t ready to adapt to these changes, you run the risk of being left behind. Small changes are easy enough to adapt to. Your customers start expressing they’d like a new feature in one of your products, and you update it to meet their needs. Maybe you develop a new product and introduce them to something they didn’t even know they wanted. But sometimes the change in your customer base is bigger. Something a new product or service can’t solve. In this case, it might be time for a repositioning. No matter how complex your organization, you can reposition yourself in the market in a way that is fast, cost effective, and customer centric. You just need to take an agile approach. #repositioning #agilestrategy #changemanagement