Patient experience in a nutshell
Shrugging off the patient experience
From your annual checkup, to an emergency situation, hospitals leave a distasteful feeling in your mouth (proof here). And aside from the unwarranted, expensive, medical bill, its most likely due to bad customer experience.
The thing is, in these unexpected situations, its really difficult to ask too much from the doctor when we are so dependent on them. The distribution of power between the players (you and the doctor) is so lopsided that it’s difficult to demand for a good experience.
But remember — its not the doctor’s fault.
Its not that they desire to treat you horribly, but rather that they are busy performing menial, time-intensive tasks. And while there are some solutions to this maddness, it may not be enough.
There are other solutions to this problem, and here we hope to bring light to them.
Admissions/Readmissions
One of the most frustrating aspects of going to a hospital is having to wait for a doctor, whether it be for an annual or for an emergency.
I mean, imagine your last hospital visit. The siloed, quiet halls, with artificially white walled pathways. The waiting room a little too cold for your taste..thinking about all the bad news you’re about to get from your doctor. Its uncomfortable and kind of sad to be honest.
You want to go in, get your checkup, and leave as soon as possible, but you know thats not possible. You have to wait, and you’re not sure why. I mean the 5 minutes you get to spend with the doctor? What else would they be doing that would make the next patient wait so long?
Position Health wants to solve this problem by wasting the inefficiency of this process. Its not that the doctor spends too much time on other patients thats the issue, its that the doctor doesn’t know who to go to next. But by having an all inclusive service with algorithms to take care of the logistics, and the service easily accessible by phone, its easy to remedy that problem. And thats what Position Health aims to do.
Patient Feedback
Aside from the readmission/admission process a patient has to go through, much of what makes the patient experience good is still unknown. And its particularly difficult to hypothesize solutions when each patient is unique.
A person going to a hospital to get an annual checkup is different from a person who was hit by a car. Likewise, they’re also different from a soon-to-be mother whose expecting in a few months.
Creating a way to obtain feedback in a targeted manner and to get useful, actionable insights is difficult.
Thats where companies like Bivarus comes to play.
Bivarus works with hospitals by acquiring the list of patients who attended in a given day, profiles them, and sends out unique surveys to see how the patient experience was.
After the patient answers the questions, Bivarus uses machine learning to create actionable insights for the hospital to perform.
The idea is that this allows hospitals to try a lot of patient experience hypotheses and receive immediate feedback. Hopefully doing so will result in a better patient experience for every unique person that enters.
The Author’s Take:
Personally I like the direction Bivarus is taking. Its a simple method that assumes the hospital to have no prior knowledge of its customer base and allows them to hypothesize and test their ideas immediately to make the patient experience better.
Having personally been through those uncomfortable hospital visits I would definitely participate and help out as much as I could.
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