Patient Centricity is at the heart of Healthcare Organisations today. Whilst CoVid19 has placed a strain on hospitals and healthcare providers, the long-term realization is that patient-centricity is at the core of competitive advantage is even more prominent. At Aquitude Health, we have been working on Patient-experience initiatives for a number of years and have identified the following five key reasons why PX projects fail.
1. No Dedicated Resource is allocated to drive PX
Healthcare organisations are under budgetary constraints. Consequently, the PX initiatives are set up to be driven by existing clinical staff who have to combine their ‘day job’ with the ‘Patient Experience’ project. However, this is the prime reason for failure. Daily chores and responsibilities take over.
Dedicated project resource, with supporting Clinical/Admin Support is critical. In addition, those resources need to have assigned time-frames to work on Patient Experience in order to maintain momentum.
2. Focus on Efficiency. Ignoring the Patient
Hospitals and Healthcare organisations are inherently process driven institutions, and such are turning in adopting LEAN processes internally. Their aim is to leverage the success of the LEAN project execution and include the Patient perspective in all processes and working frameworks and avoid the risk of overlooking it.
However, the British Medical Association Journal highlights research proves LEAN processes do not improve Patient Experience:
‘LEAN can be effective in healthcare as well as in manufacturing, with a growing literature supporting improved patient experience, quality, safety and efficiency. However, in this issue, Poksinska et al report that implementation of Lean management in 23 primary care centres in Sweden was not associated with improvements in the patient experience.’
3. Focus on Process, not on Trust-building
Healthcare organisations are run by people. As such, in order to deliver over 100%, people need to feel trust. However, efficiency, once again, trumps trust within hospitals and healthcare institutions leaving trust-building by the way-side.
It is imperative to focus on Trust-building: building trust internally within the hospital, its employees and its patients, as well as, externally as a healthcare ‘brand’ with the community, patients and other stakeholders. A combination of internal PX strategies aligned with strategic marketing and reputation management are fundamentally required.
4. Not building a Powerful PX-centred Vision
Healthcare institutions notoriously have magnanimous corporate visions on how they will improve ‘patient outcomes whilst maximizing safety’. What does this mean for patients? Complexity and lack of clarity with regards to its patient promise, leave patients cold.
Healthcare organisations need to break their traditional mould and create a simply-worded Patient Experience Vision, a true rallying-cry behind which all the organisation will work together to achieve the PX-focused stated goal. This Vision needs to be inspiration to also be understood by patients, as well as internal employees who will be executing to that Vision. This promise, thus, needs to be easy to assimilate and approachable by all.
5. Not measuring Engagement – PX is about people-performance
To deliver against Patient Experience goals, it is imperative for employees to feel part of the Patient – Centred vision, to be making a difference themselves in the execution of that vision. They need, in short, to feel they have ‘skin in the game’.
This requires the need to instil high-impact but low-cost people-engagement policies to encourage shared visions, learning and build strong cross-departmental, PX – focused collaborative teams. When teams know that they have a vested interest on a personal, as well as, a team – level, then Patient Centricity is more likely to become a reality.
Any organisation looking to make a true difference with its patients needs to take these learnings into consideration when devising and executing the PX initiatives. It they don’t they may as well not make the investment in starting to consider it. They will be throwing their valuable resources of time and money out the window. In a CoVid19 reality, no organisation can afford that expense.