Creating a Seamless Consumer Journey

Anticipate Health Needs, Enhance Access, Build Loyalty, Create Meaningful Relationships with Consumers

Scott Booker Chief Executive Officer Healthgrades

Healthgrades connects providers with consumers to build lasting relationships and drive measurable outcomes. Over 1M consumers come to Healthgrades.com daily to research doctors and make appointments. Offering unparalleled consumer healthcare insights and technology solutions, the company has helped health systems acquire, engage and retain patients for 19 years. Healthgrades CEO Scott Booker, former president of Hotels.com, is dedicated to providing trusted information and tools that help consumers and providers make meaningful connections throughout the consumer journey.

What are hospitals doing right today regarding the consumer journey, and where do they struggle?

SB: Hospitals have done a good job building out their own websites and have a keen understanding of the need to put the consumer first. Not all hospitals have embraced the need to be visible at every touchpoint beyond their system’s website where the consumer is searching for information. There is massive opportunity for hospitals to deliver a seamless consumer experience, from online appointment scheduling, to customized recommendations for other needed services, to ongoing communication to monitor chronic conditions.

Marketing campaigns in hospitals still typically focus on individual service lines, which don’t always provide them a holistic perspective of consumers. I believe a sophisticated CRM can help hospitals create robust consumer profiles, integrate persona-based communications and tailored services, while measuring results and adjusting strategies on the fly. Engaging existing patients will help manage a patient’s health between visits and create loyalty over the long term.

In what ways do hospitals have to change their approach to meet this vision?

SB: Hospitals need to understand consumers better. That means constantly listening to what consumer behavior tells them about health interests and needs. There is tremendous opportunity for hospitals to connect quickly with new patients through appointment scheduling platforms, and then build meaningful long-term relationships.

With chronic conditions, most care happens between visits, so they must connect and engage with consumers beyond the clinical setting. That means sharing data across an integrated suite of patient experience solutions, including search engine optimization, targeted advertising, online scheduling, CRM, chatbots and telehealth. All of this will require a change in how hospitals operate, to let data drive when, where, how and what they do. Communication campaigns must become consumer-centered, enterprise-driven and results-oriented to maximize ROI.

How have other industries handled these consumer challenges?

SB: Hospitals has been slow to adapt to the rise in consumerism in healthcare. Online travel is a great example of how healthcare can evolve to meet the consumer where they are. The industry uses a best-in-class approach to increase its understanding of customers, using segmentation methodologies and tailoring its services to maximize repeat business. Travel sites segment travelers into distinct personas and focus all analytics, event triggers and personalization toward them. They track consumers from the first click. Their websites emphasize easy access (online and by phone), informed choice (including guest reviews) and transparent costs. With emailed reminders, booking confirmations and post-stay review requests, it always picks up where the consumer left off.

What does a successful patient experience look like in five years, for Healthgrades and for hospitals?

SB: Healthgrades aspires to be the single source of truth for consumer and patient information. We aggregate all available data—including EMR, marketing, claims, internal and third party—using open architecture and apply predictive analytics to provide a 360-degree view of healthcare consumers. Our hospital partners access these actionable insights via a user-friendly interface that identifies opportunities and enables them to track, measure and optimize communications in near real-time. This provides the valuable information that hospitals need to create a seamless consumer-centric experience for patients.