Are You Ready for the Healthcare Consumers Called Baby Boomers?

Really. Have you given any thought to the marketing and operational challenges that Baby Boomer consumers represent to healthcare? In a time of great change in healthcare, from a provider directed and controlled model, to a consumer directed and controlled healthcare model, the Baby Boom generation will have a more significant impact than maybe what you have considered.

Think about it for a moment.

The Baby Boomer wave has changed virtually every industry they have encountered. Identified what they wanted and forced that industry to adapt to them. Brand, brand promise, and brand experience delivered they way they want it and when they want it, has changed entire industries. It has brought new products and services to market; created entirely new industries and channels. They have buried products, services, markets and channels on the ash heap of history, for not meeting their needs or expectations.

What makes you think that the Baby Boomer won't be focused heavily on healthcare, as an involved consumer, who expects high-quality, outstanding-experiences and value, delivered at a price that they deem to be reasonable?

And that will pose some significant challenges to many healthcare organizations and models of care that frown upon a "healthcare consumer" aka patient, questioning what is going on and demanding better.

With their out-of-pocket costs for healthcare increasing, Boomer 's will demand whole lot from you.

Better quality.

Better experiences.

Better value.

Better price.

Better brands.

Boomer's are getting ready to turn the healthcare process over on its head, but is anyone listening?

Marketing will play an ever increasing role in healthcare providers in understanding the massive change about to take place. That of course assumes, a rapid maturing of the understanding of marketing and its place in the organization. And for many a healthcare provider CEO that means, marketing is elevated to the senior management table in presence, focus and resources.

Boomers are bursting onto the healthcare scene as a wave crashes upon the beach. They will be informed. They will be questioning. They will demand answers and involvement in the process of care. They will demand much more from the healthcare system in the way of choice, quality, experience and brand. If Boomers' don't get what they want, they will take their healthcare dollar elsewhere.

That light you saw at the end-of-the- tunnel because of healthcare reform and the mandatory health insurance provision, if you can just survive until then, is an oncoming train that's not slowing down in the least.

Time to change.

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For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Is Patient Experience Management the New Healthcare Imperative?

The new healthcare consumer is seeking information on great outcomes and experience. That's right, great outcomes and experiences, not ordinary outcomes or experiences. You are expected to care. You are expected to provide high-quality care. Telling the healthcare consumer that you provide compassionate care and high-quality medical care, is falling on deaf ears. Especially, when the experience doesn't even come close to the claim.

And as time moves along, healthcare consumers will bypass those hospitals and healthcare providers that have less than great outcomes or experiences.

I am not saying that is fair, or right. It is a reality of a changing marketplace.

When healthcare executives are surveyed, the majority say that Patient Experience Management is a critical business success factor along with patient safety and cost reduction. But at the same time, the majority of healthcare CEOs, admit that they really don't know where to start on successfully managing the patient experience.

If you read my previous seven posts on Customer/Patient Experience Management, you would have a clear rationale and model for moving forward. Clarity, purpose and resolve provided.

And it is just not hospitals. Insurance companies, specialty pharmacies, PBMs, home health and others, that are experiencing the same challenges in managing patient, consumer or member experience.

Considering the ever increasing role of satisfaction scores in the CMS value purchasing programs, it has a direct financial outcome. Do well and receive additional revenue, fail and it will cost you. Insurance companies will follow CMS and move to more value purchasing arrangements as well.

A financial whammy approaches that requires new ways of doing business for the healthcare provider. Change and you can prosper. Refuse and find financial difficulties caused by market share losses.

Patient Experience Management is all about the culture.

It is not managing to a survey.

It is not just patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction is an outcome of experience management.

It is not just a program.

It is not just a one-time activity.

Experience Management is about changing the way you deliver care to the patient by your employees, based on an understanding of what the patients expectations are, not yours. Experience Management is culturally and organizationally uncomfortable. And that is because it's not about you anymore.

You have to have a formal definition of patient experience and that only comes from talking to patients, or consumers, or plan members.

So I answering my own question, patient experience management is the new healthcare imperative.

The speed of change in healthcare has accelerated beyond the point of no return. Healthcare providers no longer have the time to engage in endless internal dialogue, and paralysis by analysis planning loops, before moving forward. Individuals expect you to care. Individuals expect you to have high-quality outcomes.

The only way you can differentiate is through creating and maintaining that exceptional patient experience. And that only comes through active management of the experience process.

So, tell me, what you are still waiting for to get started? Time to deliver.

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the michael J Group

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.