Unlocking Consumer-Centric Healthcare: How Hospitals Can Meet Demand for Affordable, Holistic Care

Consumers have been clear: They want affordable, timely and holistic health experiences and are willing to switch providers to find them. For the past few years, new kinds of competitors have been responding to this market demand, applying their own digital and data-driven expertise toward meeting the health needs of their consumers. So far, these novel alternatives have operated mainly in areas of low acuity, but services already exist to meet consumers in any environment and in every phase of the health experience.

Hospitals and health systems have the opportunity to leverage their existing investments, community relationships, strong local presence and broad view of consumer health needs to build the unified, high-value experience people want.

Opening the digital doors to consumer-centric services

Hospital and health system leaders need to identify the partners that can engage with their complete care continuum and help them connect to an experience that spans the full consumer journey. An integrated digital front door addresses the complete scope of needs while remaining flexible enough to match the system’s capacity to scale and the specific needs of the patients it serves.

4 tips to guiding the change:

1. Assess the rate of virtual health modernization occurring in your market
2. Calculate how offering consumers more choices will impact access, engagement and outcomes
3. Build clinician and consumer satisfaction goals into planning
4. Offer as many or as few services as needed to stay competitive and invest in services at the right pace

Questions to ask:

1. Do you have a holistic view of your consumers, and can you segment by need and preferences?
2. Does your health system excel in community engagement and visibility before and after consumers are sick enough to be patients?
3. Are you waiting for consumers to come to you, or are you finding ways to meet them where they are?
4. What are the financial risks to the organization if a new competitor arrives in the community and begins to own that relationship with the health consumer?
5. Do you have a plan to build on existing capabilities and integrate virtual services across the care continuum?

Ready to learn more?

• Blessing Health provides telehealth services to a rural school district so that students can stay in school and parents and employees at work.
• Hear how WellSpan Health used patient input as its guide to launching its first on-demand telehealth program.