This article was written for Greystone.Net by Jessica Levco, a freelance healthcare writer and event strategist.

Healthcare organizations have spent years building separate teams, separate metrics and separate strategies for the consumer experience and patient experience. 

It ends up looking like this:

• Consumer experience is about delivering exceptional member experiences every time, often before the consumer ever becomes a patient.
• Patient experience focuses on making patients feel safe and cared for and providing them with quality care for the best outcomes throughout their patient journey. 

But keeping these two divisions separate is becoming increasingly artificial. And it turns out, potentially damaging to patient acquisition and retention.

At the Healthcare Interactive Conference in Las Vegas, Pranav Desai, Senior Vice President, and General Manager of Consumer Experience at Press Ganey and Brad Strothkamp, Vice President, National Data, Insights and Engagement Solutions at Kaiser Permanente, made the case that these two disciplines need to merge into a “care seeker journey.”

“What your perception is as a consumer often influences what your experience is as a patient,” Desai says. “What your experience is as a patient often influences whether you’re going to become a consumer again. We need to stop seeing this as two different things. It’s the same individual. Every action decides loyalty.”

Moving From a Campaign Mentality to Experience Mentality

Kaiser Permanente has been working to break down these silos and deliver experiences that feel personalized and seamless by changing how its marketing department functions. The marketing team has moved from a campaign mentality to experience mentality when it comes to reaching out to members and patients. This shift has required them to have the strategy, insights, and execution teams work closer together.

“Right now, behavioral insights (including modeling and propensity modeling) sit alongside attitudinal insights (member surveys, brand surveys and NPS scores),” Strothkamp says. “What I’ve found is that these teams can work together, side-by-side. The insights drive execution, the execution drives insights, and it starts all over again.”

Kaiser Permanente built what they call a “unified profile” using Microsoft’s platform, bringing all membership data together so that experiences could be orchestrated utilizing Adobe across the entire journey. The platform doesn’t only activate at engagement points; it listens to what’s happening or not happening for the member, and that informs the next step in their experience.

“For example, when we’re selling our employer’s employees on Kaiser Permanente during Open Enrollment, we have webinars and events going on,” Strothkamp says. "Before we started engaging on the technology side, nobody was connecting the dots between all the programming and potential members viewing the content.”

Now, if a prospective member attends a webinar about mental health or wellness before joining Kaiser Permanente, that information follows them into their first 90 days as a member.

“We want to talk to them as members and patients about the same things that sold them on Kaiser Permanente,” Strothkamp says. “We want to keep giving them the content they want to keep the conversation going and to build brand loyalty.”

How Proactive Service Recovery Makes a Big Difference

Kaiser Permanente’s consumer-first lens focuses on “preemptive service recovery,” which means they reach out to members before problems happen, reducing friction and making interaction easy on the member.

Getting members registered digitally as early as possible is the biggest factor in whether they’ll stay long-term. Once registered, members can find their primary care physician, set up appointments, and bring over existing medical records. But if they don’t register digitally, they’re not able to do any of that.

Kaiser Permanente streamlined the enrollment process by using a “magic link” sent via SMS — no passwords to remember, just one click to authenticate. But they also built in listening mechanisms. If someone doesn’t register after the initial outreach, the system sends a feedback link to the member to find out why.

“We’re gathering feedback on something that has not happened,” Strothkamp says. “Do they need help? That way, it goes to a phone queue and someone from our team reaches out to that individual.” 

The results? Registration for Kaiser Permanente insurance plans has increased 24% year over year.

And this is just the beginning, Strothkamp says.

“Kaiser Permanente is extending this thinking to all aspects of the experience and across all audiences including members, patients, brokers, employers and prospects,” Strothkamp says. “As a consumer shifts from product to product or between care and coverage, we want them to feel understood, supported and connected.”