What exactly is the new healthcare experience?

It may be easier to describe what the new healthcare experience is not; it is not your Electronic Medical Record, nor is it a patient portal. In fact, it is not any technologies that give patients access to information that is captured on the inside of your organization. Of course these technical solutions are critical to the next generation healthcare experience - and the future of integrated healthcare could not exist without it - but they will not define it.

Why will EMR and Portal capabilities alone never effectively redefine the new healthcare experience? In any patient’s journey from health through illness to recovery from (or management of) that illness, the overwhelming majority of any patient's life is lived outside of the direct care provided by your organization and caregivers.

For most patients, the ultimate success of their journey to health increasingly depends on their own ability to take care of themselves. Just as “self service is the best service” became the mantra for almost any web transaction over the last decade, self service in healthcare is now mission critical for myriad reasons. In fact, without successful self service from “activated” patients, your goals of continuing improvement in clinical outcomes, satisfaction scores, cost reductions and deeper patient relationships will never be fully realized.

The web efforts your have undertaken over the last decade usually recognized the importance of beginning a dialogue with patients early in their health journey. Health information integrated with relevant physician specialties and services typically provided a critical first step. However, as the nature of the online experience has evolved from informational to transactional to social, patient and consumer requirements are changing dramatically. Patients, caregivers and family members not only expect exceptional clinical care and service, the necessary clinical support before and after that clinical experience, but also the opportunity to learn from others who have relevant personal experience.

For this reason, as you depend more and more on activated and compliant patients to achieve your organizational goals, social networking must become a critical component of your healthcare experience. In order to be useful, however, those capabilities must be organized in a way that patients dealing with the same diseases or health conditions can come together and share the benefits of what you have to offer them – and what they can offer each other.

So what is the next generation healthcare experience that you need to offer your patients and the community you serve?  A seamless experience for patients, family members and caregivers that is developed from THEIR perspective...from the outside of the health system in.  Future success in creating activated, healthy and loyal patients will require that this experience recognizes both the importance of a "medical home" and a "health home."