Family Experience Management

When Patients Rule: Crowdsourcing & S-CRM

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The one application of crowdsourcing that is most overlooked is one which hardly fits the definition. This type is not premeditated. It is the type where the “machine” is a means to an end, and it does not originate at the organization. In fact, the organization is the target of this type of crowdsourcing—Social-CRM.

Most definitions of crowdsourcing include the notion of a call going out to a group of individuals who are then gathered via the call to solve a complex problem, acting like a shared problem solving methodology, much like the theory of Law of Large Numbers.

The crowd is likely to have an upper limit in terms of the number of members. By default, traditional crowdsourcing is fashioned to work from the top down; it is outbound, a push model.

Social-CRM (S-CRM) tends to work from the bottom up. There are no boundaries to the number of members; in fact, there can be thousands of members. Also atypical is the fact with S-CRM no single event or call to action drives the formation of the crowd. The crowd can have as many events as it has members.

The unifying force around S-CRM is each member’s perspective of a given firm or organization. Members are often knitted together by having felt wronged or put-off by an action, product, or service provided or not provided by said organization. Most organizations do not listen to, nor do they have a means by which they can communicate with the S-CRM crowdsource. This in turn causes the membership to grow, and to become even more steadfast in the individual missions of their members.

In traditional crowdsourcing, once the problem solving ends, the crowd no longer has a reason to exist, and it disbands. With S-CRM crowdsourcing, since the problem never seems to go away, neither does the crowd.

Every firm has one or more S-CRM groups biting at its ankles, hurting its image, hurting the brand, causing customers to flee, and disrupting the business model. Even so, most organizations ignore the S-CRM crowd just like someone ignores their crazy Uncle Pete who disrupts every family gathering.

Patient Experience Management: I hate to be a pest…

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…but I inadvertently just proved my own point, albeit to myself. I have been fooling around–with my old MP3 player, and I couldn’t get it to turn off or on–that’s why my wife hides the power tools.

I ducked into a nearby phone booth and put on my SSCC (self-service customer care shirt)–do you realize most kids under the age of ten have never seen a phone booth? Sorry.

Off to Google. I never even considered going to the manufacturer’s web site. I typed, “Remove battery from Creative Vision:M.” Up pop several YouTube videos, each done by one of Creative’s customers, showing step-by-step with voice instructions explaining how to correctly remove the battery. I place a lot more faith in what a customer tells me than I do in what they firm tells me.  Your customers (patients and doctors) do the same thing.

The user manual that came with the device never mentions how to remove the battery.

And this is my point. Your patients know what your other patients need, and in what form it will be most useful. And, they are providing it. Now, how difficult would it be for a hospital, say your hospital, to start thinking about your patients as though you were a patient? Not very.

Of the few hospitals which have a Patient Experience Management (PEM) strategy or social media (SM) strategy, not too many are effective.  I’ve only seen one which uses those to increase revenues.  Most hospitals use PEM and SM to manage spin, to try to counteract what their patients are saying about them.  One can only imagine the impact a hospital could have by starting the spin, starting conversations about itself using these tools.

You know what?  You don’t have to imagine it.  It is probably the easiest project you will undertake.

Here’s a link to a PowerPoint deck on the subject of PEM.

http://www.slideshare.net/paulroemer/good-CEM-deck

Abi-normal

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I remember the first time I entered their home I was taken aback by the clutter.  Wet leaves and small branches were strewn across the floors and furniture. Black, Hefty trash bags stood against the walls filled with last year’s leaves. Dozens of bright orange buckets from Home Depot sat beneath the windows. The house always felt cold, very cold. After a while I learned to act normally around the clutter.

There came a time however when I simply had to ask, “Why all the buckets? What’s the deal with the leaves?”

“We try hard to keep the place neat,” she replied.

“Where does it all come from?” I asked.

“The open windows, the stuff blows right in.”

I looked at her somewhat askance. “I’m not sure I follow,” I replied as I began to feel uneasy.

“It’s not like we like living this way; the water, the cold, the mess. It costs a fortune to heat this place.  And, the constant bother of emptying the buckets, and the sweeping of the leaves.”

Trying to assume the role of thought leader I asked, “Why don’t you shut your windows? It seems like that would solve a lot of your problems.”

She looked at me like I had just tossed her cat in a blender.

When you see something abnormal often enough it becomes normal. Sort of like in the movie The Stepford Wives.  Sort of like Patient Experience Management (PEM). The normal has been subsumed by the abnormal, and in doing so is slowing devouring the resources of the hospital.

Are you kidding me? I wish. It’s much easier to see this as a consultant than it is if you are drinking the Kool Aid daily. When I talk to people about a statistic that indicates that 500 people called yesterday about their bill, and everyone looks calm and collected, it makes me feel like I must be the only one in the room who doesn’t get it—again with The Stepford Wives.

If I ask about the high call volume they always have an answer, the same answer.  “Billing calls are usually around 500 a day.”  They say that with a straight face as though they are waiting to see if I will drink the Kool Aid. It’s gotten to the point where no matter how bad things get, as long as they are consistently bad, there not bad at all.

This is the mindset that enables the PEM manager (I know you don’t have one—I am being facetious) to be fooled by his or her own metrics. When is someone going to understand that repeatedly having thousands of people calling to tell your organization you have a problem, means you have a problem?

It would probably take less than a week to pop something on your web site, and post a YouTube video explaining how to read the bill.  Next week, do the same thing and help patients understand how to file claims and disputes—granted, you may need more than a week for this one.

 

 

Family Experience Management–not just the Patient

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If you are at all like me, when you need information on a topic, you go to Google.  Moreover, if the information you seek does not appear on Google, my mindset tells me the information does not exist.  Google is perceived as the repository of all things written since a caveperson—although I do not think cavepersons are thought of as being politically correct—painted the design of the first iPad on the wall of the cave with the foreskin of a newt.  If a particular idea or bit of information is not on Google, I tend to think the bit for which I am looking does not exist.

Because of the breadth and width of all the collected data, it is difficult to come up with a data request for which there is no response.  Experience shows even if you search on a meaningless phrase, Google will return to you several links that match.

Until yesterday, at least for the search I entered—Family Experience Management (FEM).  Of all the billions of bits of information, my search yielded one hit.  Being curious, I clicked on the link, and the result did not even include the phrase.

So, we are entering unchartered territory, defining a new concept.  This is a little like getting to name a new planet.

Patient Experience Management (PEM) is what got me thinking about the FEM concept, or the lack of the concept.  As we discussed per the McKinsey study, PEM is at the top of the mind of most hospital CEOs and COOs for the next several years.  The study also reported that although PEM is of such high priority, few hospitals are doing anything about PEM because hospital executives do not know who within their organization “owns” the patient.

Ignoring for the moment that this says something about one’s ability to lead, the value of a PEM initiative is it leads to patient retention, lower costs, and is good for business.  PEM, as I look at it, is not limited to streamlining the ER, or allowing patients to park closer to the hospital.  Good PEM enhances and improves every interaction the patient has with the hospital.  The more interactions your PEM program touches, the more benefits to the hospital; at least that is the theory.

But, what if there is more to it?  Is there a way to bring about more benefit by redefining and subsequently implementing a PEM program?  I think there is.

Unlike other services people purchase, healthcare, purchased via a hospital, is purchased and “used” collaboratively; patients, family, and friends are all involved in many aspects of the service.  People other than just the patient help with scheduling appointments, transportation, visiting, care, picking up medications, talking with doctors and nurses, billing, and interfacing with payers. It is kind of like MCI’s Friends and Family program, only the bill is much larger.

So, when hospitals begin to think through how to ‘manage’ the patient experience, managing the patient is but one of the stakeholders they ought to address.  The other interesting takeaway from looking at FEM instead of simply PEM are the social CRM and social networking implications.  As the number of stakeholders increases, so does the size of the social network that is willing to make their experience with the hospital the talk of the town.