The Digitally Equitable Patient Journey

I was polishing my draft for this month's Digital Health Coalition Newsletter when I took a break to join a live Coffee with Qualtrics webinar focused on equity in healthcare and the connection to patient experience. Dr. Nneka Sederstrom, Chief Equity Officer at Hennepin Healthcare and my colleague Ariel Davis are discussing essential efforts underway at Hennepin to ensure all patients are heard, seen, and cared for equally.

The overarching impetus for this discussion is that – they are not.

I am captivated.

The experiences described in the discussion and the focus for improvements are the types experiences life sciences' customers are having where industry’s products are prescribed and received. They are also experiences where industry is not directly present and may bookend the owned and operated digital resources of the brand. So, the draft I had begun to write on The Digital Patient Journey, has taken a turn.

In theory, digital assets in life sciences should be equal.

But . . . this data from Pew Research, shows us that while the assets are equitably available, they are not equitably accessible – particularly to those most vulnerable and with the highest propensity for illness.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/?tabItem=673f63a2-da02-4836-96c6-c1d4e25c8a89

While we may rejoice in our reach in digital channels, it is important to acknowledge novelist William Gibson’s poignant insight that “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”

The question to also consider - beyond accessibility is, “are our digital resources equitably understandable, valuable, actionable . . .?”.

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” - William Gibson

From Segments to Someones

Dr. Sederstrom’s role is to equalize healthcare. Helping the people surrounding the patient and patients themselves feel safe, included, valued, and heard requires a shift from segments to someones. Thus, in healthcare the Golden Rule is giving way to the Platinum one and people intersecting with and supporting patients increasingly understand the importance of treating patients as they themselves want to be treated, rather than how the care providers would like to be treated.  

You can look no further than PubMed to see this is growing mindset shift in patient centered care.

So long as the patient's values and priorities align with our own, we can infer their needs based on how we would want to be treated in their situation. The more our worldview and lived experience deviates from theirs, the more the Golden Rule begins to unravel. How would I want to be treated it I were that old? If I were that dependent? Or that disabled, disfigured, marginalized, or disease ridden? Our own biases and perceptions of current, and the possibility of future, suffering can lead to attitudes that are tone deaf and decisions that are discordant with patients' perceptions, values, and goals. - The Platinum Rule: A New Standard for Person-Centered Care - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9145569/

Building Trust (I always capitalize Trust when discussing health xperiences) is an essential aspect and that requires a conversation and social contract with your community to understand what they care about and need. If you are not seeking feedback on what is / is not working, what are we missing, what can you tell us that is hard to hear, where are we failing you, where are we not seeing you - there is an oversized chance the digital patient journey is falling short of your audience's expectations and needs.

 Feedback must always be gathered with an intent to understand and act to distinguish it from being nothing more than data. Knowing creates the obligation to act. The burning question in the Patient Digital Journey becomes – “is your digital built on their needs more than your messages?".

Operational (O-Data) alone - visits, clicks, downloads . . .  tell part of the story, but do not tell you sentiment and needs. O-Data are Known insights. Experiential Data (X-Data) avail the Knowable insights to help complete the picture of the lived digital experiences. These insights are also actionable, and those actions are measurable in terms of effort, sentiment, satisfaction, and shifts in loyalty.

Three Simple Question to Create Equity in Digital Journeys

1. For those patients who can access our digital resources, do we gather feedback to understand if their needs were met and what gaps exist for them?
2. How might X-Data enhance our ability to create more meaningful and valuable journeys for patients (in and around digital)?
3. With X-Data in hand (sentiment, direct feedback, behavioral insights) are we organized to close the loop on feedback?

Are We in the Satisfaction Business?

Standard CX metrics require understanding to help us know where we can find efficiency, effectiveness, and churn reduction opportunities. We measure loyalty, satisfaction and effort - all of which are important. We also need to understand if we are showing up as Trusted partners, who demonstrate empathy and understanding in what often amounts to our customer’s most challenging times in a health journey.

Hennepin cannot simply measure satisfaction and effort and check an inclusion or equity box, any more than the life sciences industry can in the 365/7/24 digital front doors of our companies and brands. Life sciences companies are in the helping and healing business; discovering, making, and distributing products that shift the course of diseases and illnesses in our bodies. Not understanding if people are getting across the digital divides to what they need with ease, effectiveness, and empathy - to build the Trust that inspires and sustains actions - is both a bad business and questionable human decision-making.   

The answer therefore is ‘no’. We are not in the satisfaction business. A deeper conversation and contract with customers will help guide what they need and the core metric you can seek to enhance through the combination of X and O-Data.  

If we tear a page out of the guiding patient equity principles of organizations like Hennepin, we stop thinking about people entering or digital spaces from our vantage point of their world. It is a subtle twist from asking "what is the matter with you?" to "what matters to you?".

That essential question is not answered by O-Data alone.