The healthcare industry is lagging when it comes to consumer-centricity, according to a recent survey of healthcare executives across the globe.

Brand and marketing consultants Prophet interviewed over 60 healthcare executives from provider, payer and pharma organizations. From these interviews, 5 shifts toward healthcare consumerism were identified. These shifts are:

• Moving from one-off tactical fixes to developing and implementing an experience strategy.
• Improving communications between providers and payers to eliminate obstacles for consumers.
• Moving to tailored, personalized experiences to engage consumers and promote healthy behaviors.
• Promote a culture of innovation while providing safe, effective care.
• Using data more effectively to create a “culture of customer obsession.”

Next, Prophet surveyed 240 healthcare executives from around the world to understand how organizations are responding to the 5 shifts. They found that significant strides towards healthcare consumer-centricity are not being made. Findings from the survey include:

• Healthcare is highly regulated, which makes major transformation more difficult.
• Collaboration among the major players – providers, payors and pharma – is limited, with minimal incentive for collaboration (although this is beginning to change).
• Pharma seems to have made the most strides towards more consumer focus, but still has a long way to go.
• Providers are doing better with data, but still struggle with connecting data from discrete episodes during the healthcare journey.
• Healthcare organizations are slow to partner with digital agencies to develop innovative practices.
• Just over one-quarter (27%) of survey respondents said they use relationship metrics, even though such measurements are crucial to developing consumer-centric strategies.
• Healthcare organizations are not taking advantage of the knowledge and experience of leaders from other more consumer-centric industries like retail and hospitality – only 15% of survey respondents said they would be willing to bring in leadership from outside of healthcare.

Jeff Gourdji, partner and Healthcare Practice Lead at Prophet, said, ““Healthcare executives must be prepared to transform their organizations to become more consumer-centric to remain relevant to consumers and competitive in the industry. There is a massive opportunity for healthcare organizations that can make the shift toward consumer-centricity.”