Health Care Consumerism, Up Close and Personal
An industry veteran’s report card on customer experience in health care from the perspective of a patient.
// By Lindsay R. Resnick, MHA //
As 2022 draws to a close, two issues have dominated industry talking points and sparked record-breaking investment in hundreds of specialty ventures: customer experience (CX) and digital health. I hope my newfound perspective on these trends can serve as thought starters going into 2023.
This past year I suffered a spinal-cord injury. Multiple hospitalizations and extensive rehab have given me an eye-opening user’s view of the health care system. I’ve learned how little we know about delivering high-quality health care customer experiences and how often we mistake innovation for solutions.
Inside the industry, we’re obsessed with talking to ourselves about customer or patient experience, product innovation, and new technologies. We get on conference podiums across the country to pontificate about health care consumerism and patient engagement.
But turn that outside-looking-in-view around and put it in the context of a patient struggling to understand their personal health situation — what happened, why me, what happens next, and what’s my life going to be like going forward — and a whole new set of priorities emerges, often overlooked, or certainly misunderstood by industry insiders.
Certainly, I am not the first health care executive to have had his world upended by an accident or illness, and I will not be the last. But as many have said, never let a good crisis go to waste.