Lots of companies are beginning to see the promise of riches in the "transition" space - that is, the space between hospital or nursing home care and traditional home healthcare. The idea is that the more that patient care and monitoring can happen at home, the better. Fast Company tells the story of GE and Intel's Quiet Care partnership to "keep Grandma safe." Check out this video (albeit in an assisted living facility) of the infrared motion sensors that promote safety and independence.

Now imagine this same technology to help people living where they most want to- at home. Huge marketing opportunity, but... it means thinking strategically beyond the concept of "patients."

The missing pieces of the puzzle are: 1) The panel of healthcare providers that can virtually track and respond to any emergencies. 2) The IT infrastrucure to get the right healthcare in place immediately. 3) Access to patient electronic medical records, and 4) Vision to expand these monitoring tools beyond "patients" to ever-independent boomers, babies, and everyone in-between.

Who will win the healthcare transition space?

The problem with marketing the "patient experience" can be summarized in two words: Who cares?

I mean "who" literally - whose perspective are we concerned with? Do we focus on a patient's subjective view of her or his own experience? Or the health care team's perspective on the patient's experience?

If it's the patient, then you need to consider every aspect of their experience at every touch point - from calling the hospital or office all the way through billing and follow-up. It's not at all just about the healthcare. Their experience with your website or parking lot may trump their experience inside your hospital. Check out below how Concentra Urgent Care addresses the patient experience: It's all about respect, not care per se.  

In contrast, from the provider perspective, the patient experience is primarily about the healthcare episode. Or maybe even just the "health" and not so much the "care."

There are analogous questions that apply to healthcare marketing overall: Should our healthcare marketing focus more on "health" or more on "care?" Should we focus resources more on making patients happy or making patients better? 

If you promise a better patient experience as a competitive advantage, you need to identify and deliver the right benefits. You need to determine which touchpoints matter most and make sure the interactions there are consistently topnotch. 

Know this: 1) It might mean you focus your marketing on benefits you or your providers feel are ancillary and unimportant; what I call "wrong reason marketing."  2) It requires setting your ego aside and really listening to patients and their families. 3) It works.

For a time-tested and well integrated approach, check out the pioneering work of the Cleveland Clinic. Here's the short version, and here's a more complete summary. For more on giving both patients and providers the right voice and acting on it, give us a call at ResearchWorks: 858-487-8200.

I gave a speech the other night about patient-centered care at the American College of Healthcare Executives in San Diego through SOHL. I called it: Improving your Organization's Vital Signs: Strategies & Tools for a Patient-Centered Approach. Really, it was about Customer Intimacy as an umbrella concept which gives shape and focus to patient-centered care.

One of the key takeaways was that everyone says they're doing patient-centered care. What other kind of care is there, one participant asked! In fact, there is doctor-centered care, technology-centered care, insurer-centered care, and money-centered care, among others.

Another main message was that Customer Intimacy is not for every healthcare organization. It requires a long-term view, one that looks at the lifetime value of the "customer" - not just this quarter's revenues. And when I challenged the audience to identify why patients or providers or funders should choose them; that is, what sets them apart, most were hard-pressed to do it. Fun evening with good people.

Interesting, that what we all have in common is uniqueness.

Recently, NPR told the story of a Texas hospital that is trying to use the "speed dating" concept to win new patients and bolster physician loyalty as well. Selected doctors and prospective patients pair off and chat for five minutes, then rotate into the next conversation. Check out the hospital's promotional video:

Clever idea. Attention-getting tactic. Yet there are numerous questions to consider... Will most physicians participate? Will referrals to the hospital increase? How scalable is it?  

And the bottom line question is: Can a good physician-patient match be made through a brief, patient-driven conversation? A Medscape poll shows that only 21% of physicians feel "speed dating" would be effective for their practice.

The key is asking the right questions, that is, questions that are predictive of a good doctor-patient match. And that is a work in progress.

Obama just nominated Regina Benjamin, MD to be our new Surgeon General. She's a family doctor in the shrimping village of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, winner of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" and on board of trustees of the American Medical Association.

One article credited her going back as a physician for an MBA degree as evidence that she's politically savvy, presuming that people with political ambitions get MBAs. I'm thinking of my many MBA students who for some reason chose corporate paths. Hmmm.

To me, the fact that Dr. Benjamin spent much of her career dealing hands-on with poor folks in need of care bodes well for healthcare reform. And that's how Obama introduced her, someone "who understands the urgency of meeting this challenge in a personal and powerful way..."

Onward, healthcare reform!