Lessons from AHIP: Technology is Necessary but not Sufficient to Solve Consumerism

Reed Tuckson, M.D. aptly set the stage at the AHIP Customer Experience and Digital Marketing conference last week for a great discussion around the use of technology, data analytics and learning from other industries to help solve the healthcare industry’s trend toward consumerism. Simply put, Dr. Tuckson said that we as an industry are not doing enough to solve today’s challenges.

There were several key themes throughout the conference, and the following breaks down the most important in my opinion.

Technology will not solve the problem alone

New technology is very enticing and often sold as the “magic pill” for customer and patient experience. While apps can certainly make or break first impressions, there is much more to a customer/patient experience than technology alone. There were discussions early on during the conference about how fragmented the delivery systems and data sources are in healthcare—apps sometimes complicate more than facilitate.

Payers need to keep it easy for the consumer. As Heidi Sirota pointed out in her presentation—customers don’t want surprises, they do want to find quality doctors nearby, they want observable value for the money paid for their healthcare and ultimately look for helpful, jargon-free, empathetic service.

Delivering unique consumer value

Cautionary advice out of the way, there were excellent case studies of real world solutions to digital health and how to engage the patient to drive loyalty with a focus on telehealth, wearables, and video triage. For both situations where a patient needs triage for a more serious issue or just needs a quick consult and diagnosis, like a sore throat or poison ivy, telehealth can be both an efficient and effective form of care.

Big Medium also hosted a discussion of IoT and the physical interface, including some very compelling screen-less applications like the digitization of medications that can relay information about the efficacy of the prescribed medications. Going a step further, they also have glow caps for medication where if you forget to take a medication the caps glow as a reminder.

Data and analytics will be the key to success

Moving the quality of care and subsequent patient satisfaction needle are paramount to the use of any app or technology. The ability to measure customer sentiment, satisfaction and outcomes has never been better. There is no shortage of data, however, finding and connecting the most relevant data points quickly and accurately to improve patient care is the challenge.

Paraphrasing Natalie Schneider of Anthem—unhappy customers are expensive. They call a lot and complain to others. Getting a new customer to replace them is more expensive than the efforts to retain an existing customer.

We must look to others outside healthcare to help and to learn from

Many industries are already chest-deep in customer satisfaction, personalization and data insights that healthcare should be looking to for guidance. Yes, healthcare has regulations that many industries don’t have to contend with, however, we must look beyond the insulated perspectives of healthcare if we want to innovate fast.

Amazon is mentioned ad nauseam when it comes to consumerism.  There are so many other companies and industries doing data analytics and personalization well that have relevance to healthcare. Especially those that don’t want to compete 100% on price, but on quality and experience. This includes retail, hospitality and the cable industry. The major players in these industries are second-to-none in understanding who their most valuable customers are by incorporating key economic, demographic and psychographic data into their customer ecosystem as well as billing and credit ratings, usage and engagement data from their CRM.

There’s no doubt that payers need to shore up their customer engagement game. The gap between understanding this and acting upon it has got to be crossed—and fast.