Branded Patient Experience 2: Moments of Value

Reimagining Patient Engagement – BPE Branded Patient Experience℠
March 15, 2016
E-Bombs
April 4, 2016

Moments of ValueThe net effect of healthcare reform on the provider marketplace is turning out to be hyper competition. Providers must compete for prime contracts, payer relationships, physician relationships, supplier resources, and most importantly patient preference. Similarly, suppliers are in a new era of competition; technology is not the most powerful differentiator anymore. Suppliers need to link solutions to increasingly complex and ambiguous business goals to gain support from executives and project sponsors.

On one hand, more competition is a healthy condition. It signals that a market is mature and customers can benefit from rivalry, to get better pricing, and more innovative products and services.  On the other hand, more competition has the capacity to destroy margins, and it puts pressure on the labor market as well as requiring greater efficiency and cost control.
From any vantage point, the ability to win in the midst of greater competition requires the ability to maximize customer value perception.

How does today’s provider and supplier enhance customers/consumers’ perceptions of value? Is offering a good price enough? Should players increase their marketing budgets and bend consumer perception with advertising?
Certainly all of these are options. However, a more fundamental examination of the consumer experience may be required. This examination focuses on discovering stable and repeatable “moments of value.”

Moments of Value

These moments are where the consumer interacts with the provider and there is a connection formed. In healthcare these moments are not the result of an impressive lobby, or beautiful grounds. Those help put people at ease, and it signals quality, but those things doe not convey value.
Moments of value are usually found when someone has a question, or needs some assistance. These “regular” touch points are the opportunities to create moments of value.
An example that was relayed to us by a partner organization that observed a hospital that had every person who interacted with the patient sign a card. When the patient was ready for discharge, the card was sent, with the inscription, “we were your care team, and we hope you are doing well.” That is a moment of value.

How can manufacturers create moments of value? We will discuss that in the next installment.

By:
Gunter F. Wessels, Ph.D., M.B.A.
Total Innovation Group Inc., Practice Principal, Partner
and
Sam O’Rear, MA, BS
Total Innovation Group Inc., Senior Partner

Total Innovation Group
Lincoln Center
5401 W Kennedy Blvd
Suite 750
Tampa, FL 33609
813-814-1902