We’re not going to say we told you so, but…
Ahh, sweet validation. For years, we’ve been advocating for enhanced patient experiences as a leading way to gain a competitive edge in the healthcare provider market. We’ve done studies. We’ve printed papers. We’ve spoken at conferences. We’ve blogged and twittered, ranted and raved. We’ve looked at disbelieving providers, insisting yes, the overall experience you provide your patients is just as important (or – gasp! – sometimes more important) than the clinical care you provide in creating loyal customers, word of mouth, an improved position in the market, and better business results.
Now, a story in the February 16 issue of BusinessWeek seems to validate this belief. Titled “Nurse, More Caviar” (always good to exaggerate to make a point), the story discusses research by two RAND economists, who in a study of more than 8,700 Medicare pneumonia patients, seemed to have correlated hospital popularity in this group with a high “amenities” score from the patients themselves, which outranked high quality (as measured by mortality rate). Says the article:
“A high amenities score, they found, predicted keen demand much more than a low pneumonia mortality rate did.”
In other words, patients were more likely to select a hospital based on its amenities than on the level of its clinical quality. The economists give a couple of reasons for this outcome, including the scarcity of quality medical information available to patients, making it harder for them to judge based on this criteria, and that many patients most likely associate the higher quality facilities themselves (as reflected in the enhanced experience) with higher clinical quality. As we’ve discussed before, we’d also advocate that many people don’t know how to compare clinical quality data even when they have it. In fact, the problem these days is less a scarcity of quality data, and more an overflow of it – how does a patient know which resource of data to trust? On the other hand, we all have experience evaluating personal service, the taste of food or the quality of the in-room flat-screen television.
The article goes on to conclude that as hospitals fight to market themselves, they may abandon “attracting the best doctor,” and instead focus on “giving them (the patients) wireless Internet.” While the experience distinguishes brands in most industries, you still always need to have a great product (in this case, a great clinical product). And as always, it can be dangerous to read too much into a correlative study, which only shows how two variables move in concert, not necessarily that one variable (great amenities) causes another (higher patient demand) to move.
But hey – these are RAND economists, in a BusinessWeek article, with a study involving more than 8,700 patients. We’ll take that kind of validation any day!
So are hospitals saving us from ourselves? Seems scary to think that wireless internet is more important than a doctor. I would agree that might be better than the best doctor, but it certainly isn’t more important than a competent doctor. Do we really know the difference?
Of course wireless internet, or cushy pillows, or a nice view, aren’t more important than a great doctor (or any other measure of high quality clinical care). But it’s all relative. Think of it this way. If you were deciding on a car to purchase, and were asked to rank from a list what is most important in your buying decision, what if the list had “Car won’t blow up when I start it.” Most people would rank that at the top, above MPG, style, type of stereo, etc. But obviously, no one would use that criteria to purchase a car, because we would all assume this would never happen. I exaggerate to make a point. When it comes to choosing a cardiologist in the Twin Cities, for example, I assume I have dozens of high quality doctors to choose from. So I’m going to use other criteria like convenience or service for my selection, both because I understand it better, have more experience valuing it, and because there are differences in convenience among my choices. It’s very much perception vs. reality, but narrowing your selection of a cardiologist to those who have great quality outcomes (assuming you can find and understand that information) will still leave you with many choices.