Prioritizing the Digital Health Care Experience | Industry Insights | All MKC Content | ANA

Prioritizing the Digital Health Care Experience

Infrastructure investment, technology advances and the pandemic are transforming expectations for digital health.

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The Inflation Reduction Act, recently signed into law, will reshape many aspects of the health care industry, and should heighten the sector's focus on access, innovation and virtual care.

That's welcome news for consumers, who have registered interest in using cost-saving digital options for everything from routine health maintenance to provider selection, online pharmacies, treatment, and follow-up. These already-high consumer expectations for digital will only grow as demands for greater convenience, more on-demand options and increased self-sufficiency become more and more the norm.

As a result, health care organizations – typically not known as leaders in new technology adoption – will need to incorporate digital more widely into patient-facing applications as well as behind-the-scenes operations.

Organizations that adopt an innovation mindset – and the tools to bring ideas to life – will find they can reach audiences more effectively, make strategic pivots with greater confidence, roll out programs faster and measure performance more accurately.

A Convergence of Trendlines


Several trends have intersected to bring us to today's inflection point.

Technology advancement: Technology has matured and supports every patient touchpoint – most of which exist outside the narrow realm of clinical care. From finding providers, to scheduling appointments, to pre-visit screening to follow-ups, claims processing and more, today's state-of-the-art digital and mobile health platforms offer robust functionality that supports every step in the patient journey.

Consumer expectations: The likes of Amazon and Apple have created consumer expectations for seamless, efficient, intuitive digital and mobile experiences in every aspect of their lives – health care very much included.
Broadband everywhere: The infrastructure bill signed by President Biden will provide high-speed internet access "at a steep discount to low-income consumers," as stated in The Washington Post. This increased bandwidth will enable more robust interactions and functionality for those most in need.

COVID-19 reverberations: Consumers who were not videoconferencing pre-pandemic have grown accustomed to doing things virtually for safety and convenience, doctor consultations included. We've hardly scratched the surface of possibilities involving virtual reality and the "med-a-verse."

New kinds of competition: Health care startups – flush with cash from venture backers – are rethinking broad swaths of how services are conceived, marketed, and delivered. Established organizations will need to question age-old assumptions and reexamine legacy processes to remain relevant.

Good for Patients, Good for Business


Digital health investment will deliver returns not just for individuals but for organizations as well.

Research by Deloitte found that "hospitals with high patient-reported experience scores have higher profitability," with net operating margins of 4.7 percent, or three times the margins of hospitals with low scores.
And digital is key to patient experience: A Becker's study concluded that "More than 61 percent of patients say they'd switch providers just to get an improved patient portal."

However, delivering that high quality digital experience isn't easy: Health care solutions provider Kyruus found that, even for top-ranked hospitals, "the race to keep up with patient preferences continues to be challenging," with relatively few health care systems providing features such as virtual assistants, which patients report finding highly useful.

Think Like a Disruptor


Hospital systems need to adopt the disruption thinking of tech-driven startups and improve their ability to roll out new programs rapidly, evaluate success and identify near-and longer-term upgrades.

  • Think end-to-end. Digital needs to be integrated into every aspect of patient and organizational experience. Just as retailers early on learned to integrate the web at every point in the customer journey, so too must health care organizations challenge themselves to discover every touchpoint where digital can make a difference.
  • Continually re-evaluate. Health care organizations must regularly reassess their readiness to deliver high quality patient digital experience. What functionality do patients expect to see? What are marketplace competitors doing? What is the gap between objectives and capabilities?
  • One-year plan, five-year vision. We tend to overestimate the near-term impact of technology and underestimate the long-term possibilities. Having both a concrete one-year plan and an aspirational longer-term vision forces organizations to think both practically and imaginatively.
  • Light the way with beacons. Digital transformation sounds open-ended and overwhelming. Defining achievable initiatives to move the ball forward via quick wins – "beacon projects" – help organizations gain learning, confidence, and momentum.

Wherever an organization is today – whether leading or lagging the pack – is almost irrelevant, as digital will continue to evolve and bring new opportunities along with threats. The most important thing hospital networks and health care organizations can do is to prioritize digital and develop a mindset of envisioning, testing, refining, and rolling out new functionality in support of the digital-first, patient-centric experience. For consumers, it already is the priority.


The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA.


Eric Feige is the managing director of strategy at VShift.

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