NTT DATA Services: More Personalized Patient Experiences Needed

There is little doubt that a good patient experience leads to better outcomes. A “good experience”, however, is a moving target that is shaped by consumer experiences in other industries like retail, banking, and hospitality. Patients are beginning to expect more personalized care. NTT DATA Services believes it can be delivered if healthcare is willing to use new approaches and technology to engage patients.

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Milissa Campbell, Managing Director Health Plan & Life Sciences Consulting and Dr. Richard Swafford, Director of Industry Consulting from NTT DATA Services to ask them about how “personalized patient experiences” might be achieved.

Personalized Patient Experience Defined

The Beryl Institute defines patient experience as: “the sum of all interactions shaped by an organization’s culture that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care”. What is clear from this definition is that our experiences with healthcare span the entire continuum of care, not just the brief encounter with clinicians. It includes everything prior to the encounter and everything after.

It is those areas where personalization can have a big impact.

Campbell defined personalized patient experience as: “sending the right message to the right person at the right time, in the right way or channel that will resonate with them. Running a query to find all the diabetics in a certain zip code – that’s not personalized health care.”

Instead, according to Campbell, it’s all about understanding patients as individuals and tailoring communications that will motivate them to take action.

Poster vs Personalized Message

To illustrate her point, Campbell cited a mammogram example.

To encourage patients to book a mammogram, a doctor could put up a poster in their exam room with a motivational message and instructions on how to make an appointment. This generic message is likely only to be noticed by a small percentage of their patients and an even smaller percentage would take action. This type of “broadcast message” does not take into consideration anything about the patient for whom the message is intended.

With a personalized approach, the doctor would start by focusing on the patient population most in need of the mammogram message. For example, women between the ages of 45 and 64, plus men who are at risk for breast tissue cancer. The clinic would then deliver a message via a modality that the patient responded to in the past (ie: an email). Furthermore, the message would be delivered at a time when that patient was known to have booked their last mammogram.

This level of personalization increases the likelihood that an appointment will be booked, which will ultimately mean better outcomes and care for the patient.

The Amazon Effect

The pandemic has shown us that healthcare can be like other industries and deliver the Amazon experience,” stated Dr. Swafford. “Healthcare needs to drive that more than they have in the past.”

“Everybody wants the Amazon experience,” added Campbell. “I want a customized experience to me. I want something that meets my needs, at my time and in my place.”

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): patients’ experiences with care, particularly communication with providers, correlate with adherence to medical advice and treatment plans.3-6 This is especially true among patients with chronic conditions, where a strong commitment from patients to work with their providers is essential for achieving positive results.

The most recent Consumer Perspectives on Patient Experience 2021 study from Beryl Institute revealed:

  • Over 95% of respondents say having a good experience is “very important” or “extremely important,” making this an essential strategic priority
  • More than 95% of consumers see their healthcare experience as grounded in a focus on their health outcomes and overall well-being

“I tell health plans and health systems all the time – you’re no longer competing against the health plan down the street,” said Campbell. “You’re competing with every experience that person has.”

Technology Partners

Both Dr. Swafford and Campbell, believe that Amazon has shown us that it is possible to deliver highly personalized experiences at scale. Patients now expect healthcare to follow suit. To deliver on this expectation, healthcare organizations will need to leverage technology partners.

“There’s a partner of ours, Lirio, and they have a behavioral scientist on staff,” continued Dr. Swafford. “They build their models for personalization around the behavioral elements, as well as the analytics and the data.

Snowflake for example,” explained Campbell. “A large cloud-based platform and healthcare data marketplace, where you have immediate access to incredible amounts of third-party data. That data is made very easy for you to use.”

Data necessary to build personalized experiences. As the amount of health data exponentially increases, healthcare organizations will need a platform and an architecture that can help them manage it more effectively.

Healthcare organizations will need to look to innovative technology partners to help lay the foundation for improved experiences that match the changing expectations of patients, patients who are accustomed to what other industries are delivering.

“You need a technology stack that can handle that,” said Campbell. “And then what are your layers on the top? It’s layered: data, platform, and the stack of services you are using on top of that.”

NTT DATA Services can help build those layers.

Watch the full interview with Milissa Campbell and Dr. Richard Swafford to learn:

  • How sales training helped a group of clinicians provide better care
  • Where patient experience is being prioritized
  • How R2D2 can help with medication adherence

Learn more about NTT DATA Services: https://ca.nttdata.com/en/digital/data-intelligence-and-automation/data-architecture-modernization/snowflake-data-cloud-for-healthcare

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NTT DATA Services is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

Transcript

[00:00:08] Colin Hung: Hi! This is Colin Hung with Healthcare IT Today. I’m excited to sit down with NTT DATA Services: Milissa Campbell, Managing Director Health Plan and Life Sciences Consulting and Dr. Richard Swafford, Director of Industry Consulting. Welcome to the program.

[00:00:32] Milissa Campbell: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:33] Colin Hung: So today we’re going to be talking about personalization in healthcare, which is a really cool topic and a very important field. I’m interested to learn more about how we can actually achieve it in healthcare.

[00:00:46] Milissa Campbell: Absolutely.

[00:00:47] Colin Hung: Now I’ve heard many, many healthcare organizations talk about this. I’m actually not sure if it’s just lip service or if there’s something behind this. But for our audience, could define for us what personalization in healthcare mean to you?

[00:01:01] Milissa Campbell: We use a pretty simple construct. It’s sending the right message to the right person at the right time, in the right way or channel that will resonate with them. When you think about personalized messaging – it’s different than segmentation.

[00:01:17] We talked about this with a partner of ours yesterday. Running a query to find your diabetics in a certain zip code. That’s not personalized health care. What do we know about Colin that tells us how to message him and how to provide care to him that resonates and will drive action, which drives outcome.

[00:01:33] So personalization it’s those four things. Right. Message. Right. Person. Right time. Right way. So that’s, that’s the definition we use.

[00:01:41] Dr. Richard Swafford: You know interestingly enough, the term “personalization” has spawned from engagement and experience. We deal in healthcare with a lot with shiny objects. So that term is somewhat of a rebranding of what we’ve been dealing with around patient engagement and patient experience for decades.

[00:02:04] Colin Hung: Just for the record, in order to get me motivated you just have any Star Wars character deliver the message to me and I’ll be medication adherent.

[00:02:16] Milissa Campbell: R2D2 does the pill distribution!

[00:02:19] Colin Hung: We’re coming up with fantastic product ideas! Can you share an example of what a highly personalized patient experience actually would be like?

[00:02:28] Milissa Campbell: There’s kind of a spectrum. I’ll tell you the bottom of the spectrum so that we can distinguish the top of them.

[00:02:35] So think about mammograms, right? Everybody’s pushing to get mammograms. We all know the value of that. Kind of at the bottom of the spectrum is: maybe your doctor puts a poster in his office, which means some people see the same message…sometimes…in the same way. Super generic. That’s just the bottom rung.

[00:02:56] If we go up through a maturity and evolution curve and get to truly personalized. Now we’re talking about: certain people like women between the ages of 45 and 64, plus men who are at risk for breast tissue cancer, receiving a message in a modality that has been identified as best for them, at a time that is more appropriate based on their history of getting mammograms.

[00:03:19] The compliance. The timing of the year they do it. Risk factors. Then engaging them in a way that allows for like one click scheduling. So for me, texting great way to reach me. So if you send me a link and all of a sudden I realized, oh, this is right, this is my time of year and you say, click here to schedule…you have me. I’m scheduled.

[00:03:37] And we know in health care, if you can get scheduled, you still have a no-show challenge. But if you can get scheduled, that’s half of the battle. One person getting a specific message at a specific time in a modality that drives action.

[00:03:50] You can pivot that to care as well. So thinking about people who need virtual care or in-home care, or “what’s the type of care modalities that are best for them” that will resonate, that again, will drive behavior that drives outcomes. That’s the spectrum that I would use as an example.

[00:04:11] Colin Hung: Well, thanks for that. What are some of the factors that are driving this personalization trend in healthcare? What’s pushing organizations to go this route?

[00:04:23] Milissa Campbell: What I think we’re seeing is that patients and members and people – whatever word you use in your organization – are demanding it, quite frankly. I tell health plans and health systems all the time – you’re no longer competing against the health plan down the street, you’re competing with every experience that that person has.

[00:04:42] Everybody wants the Amazon experience. I want a customized experience to me. I want something that meets my needs, at my time and in my place. So I think there’s a high customer demand for it. Just as we compare our experiences across the board, it doesn’t matter that the health plan down the street isn’t doing it because when I go do my online grocery shopping, this is what I’m used to doing, so this is how I want to access my healthcare. I think that’s probably the biggest step that I see.

[00:05:10] Dr. Richard Swafford: Yeah. I mean, consumerization in healthcare, right? The pandemic, if it’s had any sort of side effect, has shown that those of us that consume healthcare, recognize that healthcare can be just like other industries and deliver the Amazon experience. Healthcare needs to drive that more than they have in the past. Personalization -“the know me” slogan is important. It’s critical.

[00:05:35] Milissa Campbell: You brought up a good point about other industries. Another area that I think we need to think about in healthcare is: we were behind other industries in how we use data and technology.

[00:05:44] We all know that. Everyone n this place right now knows that. When we look at CPG [consumer packaged goods] and retail and financial service and how they’re using data to personalize an experience, or to personalize how they take care of their customers…we could learn a lot.

[00:05:59] The same type of analytics that you use to decide to push someone to Coke instead of Pepsi, it’s a similar construct for healthcare. It’s different variables, but you’re going for some sort of behavior. You want somebody to choose a healthy behavior. And so I think we need to really learn from other industries about how they’re leveraging data, how they’re catering to the consumer and learn from all the mistakes they’ve already made and what they’ve accomplished.

[00:06:24] Colin Hung: You’re definitely making my inner marketer very happy because a lot of these are marketing concepts.

[00:06:30] Milissa Campbell: Very much. In my past, there was a preclinical program we had built. We sent our clinicians to sales training, and they were furious because they were like: “We’re clinicians, we don’t go to sales training”. It was the best thing we ever did because at the end of the day, you’re selling engagement. You’re selling a health choice. And clinicians are trained well as clinicians, but you’ve got to sell. So I think that the marketing analogy is exactly right.

[00:06:57] Colin Hung: So where does personalization fall relative in priority? And what I mean by that is obviously one of the top priorities this year is staffing. There’s a lot of staffing challenges, but this personalization seems to be very important. But what have you seen from your clients where falls? Is it high on the list or is it lower?

[00:07:14] Milissa Campbell: I think it’s continuing to move up, but I’d be interested Richard’s perspective as well, In the health plan space, which is where I spend most of my time, the demand is ever rising. It’s at least a high strategic goal of theirs. Where we find the variation is: where they are in that journey. So are we at the beginning where it’s just rhetoric: “Hey, we’re going to personalize” or have we thought about what that looks like? Have we developed a plan? Are we taking actions towards that plan? I think where they are in the journey is incredibly broad across the spectrum, but I think every health plan and health system that I’ve been interacting with it is on their radar. It is important. And they’re looking at how to invest in it, both, both dollars and people.

[00:07:56] Dr. Richard Swafford: Yeah, I would say from the provider perspective and our customers in the provider market, it’s a high priority. It’s right up there with their staffing concerns. Whether they’ve figured it out yet is another issue, but the fact is that they have it very high on their priority. It’s interesting because it affects their competitive position. It affects their ability to drive additional revenue and reimbursement. It affects their ability to grow their business. Traditionally healthcare has been not-for-profit and now we’ve got more for-profit entities…that’s a concern and marketing and sales are becoming part of that. Reaching your customer at a personal level is key to that. So it’s happening.

[00:08:38] Milissa Campbell: I want to pick up on something you said. One of your questions earlier was about what’s driving it? One of the things we’re seeing, even though there’s not sort of industry standards or regulations, things like the stars for Medicaid and Medicare Advantage. The stars program. All of the member experience measures are jumping up in weight. They’re having a significantly bigger impact on a health plan’s ability to achieve a four-star, which is where all the money is. So they have to pay attention to experience and the way that you do that is you personalize and you customize.

[00:09:10] So I think it’s not regulatory, but these accreditating bodies and these pay-for-performance pay-for-quality constructs are really starting to pay attention to – how do you drive the member experience?

[00:09:21] Colin Hung: What are some of the ingredients, in terms of types of technologies, that have to be applied in order to have a patient personalized experience?

[00:09:30] Milissa Campbell: Sure. Data. Data. Data. Data. Data. That would be my first answer. One of the things that we’ve been talking about in healthcare…I joke and I hate throwing this number out…but I’ve been in healthcare for 30 years and we’re having some same conversations.

[00:09:44] But data that’s bigger than your EMR. That’s bigger than your claim set. Data that you would not expect to have anything to do with what you’re studying, because you’d be surprised how powerful it can be. So data, data, data, data, data. When you have that much data, you need a platform and an architecture that can handle it. From: can you get it in? Can you get it connected? Can you manage it? All of that technology. You need a technology stack that can handle that and then what are your layers on the top? Whether it be CRM or managing campaigns, So it’s layered: data, platform, and what stack of services you are using on top of that.

[00:10:29] Dr. Richard Swafford: I would also consider what’s being used in other industries. If you think about behavioral sciences as an example – behavioral science, in terms of managing patient expectations around behavior, messaging, and communicating with patients in the way they expect to be communicated with. There’s a partner of ours, Lirio, excellent partner, and they have a behavioral scientist on staff and they build their models for personalization around the behavioral elements, as well as the analytics and the data.

[00:10:57] So I think segmentation, and we we’ve talked about this Milissa, sgmentation is just the beginning. You have to get beyond that and actually know your patient in a multitude of aspects, not just the data side.

[00:11:12] Milissa Campbell: Right.

[00:11:14] Colin Hung: Can you share specific effective technologies that can be applied in this area?

[00:11:18] Milissa Campbell: Absolutely. Richard mentioned our partner Lirio, but if we go back a step into that data platform conversation, Snowflake, for example – large cloud-based platform, healthcare data marketplace, where you have immediate access to incredible amounts and vast amounts of third-party data. That data sharing is made very easy for you to use.

[00:11:40] That’s a great example of the type of technology that we would be looking at with our clients to say: “this can be a vehicle to get you there, this has accelerators, this has value towards personalization.”

[00:11:53] We work with a lot of vendors that have some great analytics. Richard’s mentioned Lirio, I think you’ve got another couple other partnerships you’re working with…

[00:12:02] Dr. Richard Swafford: Yeah, so Olive for example, in automating and building streamlined processes around the interaction. Again, there’s a plethora of folks in this room that are focused on that. Our partnerships help us drive those types of conversations

[00:12:22] Milissa Campbell: It’s an ecosystem play – which is you have industry expertise, you have partners who’ve mastered something and have validated and proven approaches to technologies. And then you have the client strategy. If you can bring those together, I think that’s how effective programs are built.

[00:12:38] Colin Hung: Where can people go to find out more information about NTT data services?

[00:12:42] Milissa Campbell: Easy, easy, easy www.nttdata.com.

[00:12:47] Colin Hung: Thank you so much for the information that you shared with us today. It’s a lot to think about, and I’m excited for this patient personalized future that we’re heading towards.

[00:12:55] Milissa Campbell: We will send R2D2 your way.

[00:12:57] Colin Hung: Excellent. Excellent.

 

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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