Digital Healthcare’s Personalized, Consumer-Centric Future

What’s Trending: Health Systems Focused on Meaningful Personalization Are Securing the Lead in Care Delivery

While most healthcare organizations (79%) are in the planning stages for digital transformation presently, our new survey of health system executives reveals that nearly half (46%) expect to be in the implementation stages within 5 years. At the same time, health systems should expect that emerging rivals will increasingly make disruptive plays to compete where traditional healthcare organizations have dominated.

With this pace of change, organizations won’t achieve differentiation simply by offering a set of digital health use cases. Rather, what hospitals and health systems can uniquely offer is how they use those technologies to personalize the care experience for consumers.

In our recent survey , we asked health system executives about the future state of their digital transformation. We found that:

1. Health systems are working toward digital transformation implementation, setting the stage for personalization of care experiences. While 54% anticipate they will still be in planning stages in 5 years, 46% say they will be in implementation stages.
2. Across each major digital use case, health systems are transitioning from planning to implementation. In the next 5 years, organizations plan to be in the implementation stage for remote patient monitoring (55%), digitally enabled contact/service center (50%), digital specialty care initiatives (49%), digital-first primary care (49%), digital front door (47%), and hospital at home (39%), signaling a shift from simple point solutions to a holistic, digitally enabled care journey.
3. Competitive threats from rivals are only growing—particularly among nontraditional ones. Healthcare executives expect their competitors in digital services and technologies over the next 5 years to include virtual health companies (48%), payers (45%), retail care providers (41%), and large tech companies (41%).?
4. Health systems recognize that digitally forward disruptors are gaining on them—particularly when it comes to personalized care. Healthcare executives say the organizations that will demonstrate the highest levels of competition in personalized care are other health systems (49%), virtual health companies (46%), and large tech companies (42%).
5. Partnerships are emerging as a key strategic avenue to quickly personalize digital care experiences. 44% say they will partner with competitors to offer personalized care, and 13% say they will work with competitors to share consumer information to help personalize care.?

Why It Matters:

Though consumers have historically stayed loyal to the providers they know, that trend is starting to shift as more convenient and compelling alternatives compete for those same patient consumers. Consequently, the incumbent advantages of trust and deployed assets that provider organizations hold are quickly becoming subsumed by technology and innovation toward more personalized care experiences.

Within the next 5 years, health systems should expect that emerging rivals will increasingly make disruptive plays to compete where traditional healthcare organizations have dominated, especially in primary care. In response, hospitals and health systems will need to build their digital infrastructures and portfolios of initiatives while concurrently looking for opportunities to partner in the personalization of those digital offerings. The key differentiation won’t be in?whether?hospitals and health systems are delivering personalized care but?how?they are doing so.?

The push toward digital transformation is accelerating on many fronts, but it is no longer enough to attract consumers with technology. Patients expect their care experiences to be tailored to their needs and preferences, with ease of use on par with other transformed industries, such as travel, banking, or retail.

As trusted stewards of patient data, hospitals and health systems must translate their caches of information into meaningful insights that consistently drive more impactful interactions between the patient and provider. Provider organizations can design and deploy a digital ecosystem around these compelling interaction points to naturally attract and retain consumers. These digital ecosystems must also be designed to unlock new care models and business opportunities that can deliver a return on the significant investments being made to develop them. New access points, expanded patient segments, and more efficient care delivery are all achievable with a deliberate focus on scalable personalization that combines patient data with technology.

What’s Next:

In order to retain the lead in care delivery, health organizations will need speed, focus, and an enterprise-wide transformation process driven by ROI. This is especially true as healthcare providers transition their leadership position in the historical context into a differentiated and enduring leadership position in the digitally transformed—and personalized—future state of healthcare delivery.

To better understand your health system’s current trajectory toward offering the access, interactions, and care experiences consumers are looking for—and toward meeting the needs of the broader community population—consider these key questions:

• What opportunities have you identified to start personalizing the care experience for your consumers already? How does digital technology enable you to capitalize on and scale those opportunities?
• What personalized capabilities do you expect to make the most impact in attracting and retaining patients within your digital ecosystem?
• Have you defined your personalization goals and mapped them against business objectives that can demonstrate return on your personalization investments, both in terms of financial position and of advancing strategic goals (such as health equity)?
• What personalized data on your patients and how they seek care do you intend to leverage as a competitive advantage over nontraditional rivals that are entering the provider space?
• In what ways will you partner with community organizations to better advance health outcomes and become the provider of choice for your entire population?
• In which ways will your health system partner with traditional and nontraditional rivals to offer an optimized consumer experience? In which ways will you compete?

For more on the future state of healthcare, click through to our latest health system survey.

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ABOUT THE CHARTIS GROUP

The Chartis Group? (Chartis) is a leading healthcare advisory services firm serving healthcare providers, payers, service organizations, and investors. Different by design, Chartis brings an unparalleled breadth and depth of expertise in strategy, performance improvement, digital and technology, clinical quality and patient safety, health equity and belonging, and strategic communications. For more information, visit www.chartis.com .

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