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Empowering Health Journeys by improving Patient Experience (PX)

Improving the Patient Experience or ‘PX’ is becoming an increasingly important objective and metric in our hospitals. While this concept has taken a while to catch on in Australia (compared to countries like the UK), it is encouraging that it is part of many hospitals’ accreditation process these days. Some health CEO’s have stated that a closer eye on PX acts as an ‘early warning system’ to pick up underlying quality and safety issues that may be occurring.

As a parallel story, my 3 years developing start-ups in the technology industry enlightened me to the tech industry’s an absolute obsession with User Experience (UX). A successful technology platform has to be so customer focussed and understand a user’s behaviour in such detail, that it could predict the next 10-20 moves of customer journey and make it as pleasant and effortless as possible, so they don’t have to choose any other option.

Google staff used to say “Remember, our competitor is just one click away”, referring to the ease in which someone could make a choice to switch service if they were dissatisfied. I believe this attitude, combined with data analytics capability, will make Google and Apple major health players in the future, once they understand how traditional health systems work.

How would a strong discipline of improving PX help the health and wellbeing of all Australians?

Like in any system, consumers that are more empowered are more likely to push improvements in the system. In the case of healthcare, particularly in the public sector, users (i.e. patients) may not always have a choice as to which doctor, nurse or specialist they see. This occasional lack of choice therefore disempowers individuals who are then not incentivised to drive innovation in the system.

If that psychology around ‘walking in a patient’s shoes’, empowering them with choices and improving PX can be harnessed, today’s predictive analytics and technology could easily modify behaviours that result in reduced obesity, diabetes and other chronic conditions, simply by making it as effortless and pleasant as possible to do so. These technologies, like the Fitbit for individuals and MES Experience, a digital patient survey platform for hospitals, can analyse feedback data quickly so changes can be made rapidly.

If you’d like to learn more on ways to empower consumers and improve experience in the health journey, you may have received the invitation last week for the breakfast event called Building a Sustainable, Patient-Centred Healthcare System on Aug 11, 2015, 7.30 AM to 10.30 PM (AEST) | Sydney.  Please join us if you are available, or feel free to pass on this invitation to your colleagues in healthcare. Click here to REGISTER

About the Author: Dr Avnesh Ratnanesan

Dr Avi is a medical doctor with broad healthcare sector experience including hospitals, biotech, pharmaceuticals and the wellness industry. He is a leading expert who coaches and consults to senior executives, entrepreneurs, practitioners, organisations and governments.