patient journey Archives - delightability

February 6, 2014October 2, 2023

CVS Pharmacy Writes Future by Saying Good Bye to Cigarettes

Bravo to CVS for their Tobacco Decision

CVS to Stop Selling Tobacco Products

The CVS tobacco decision is heralded by some. Others think it to be a poor decision that will harm earnings and inconvenience customers. If we were living in a different time, with different knowledge, and CVS was scrapping by needing to sell anything in order to put food on the table, I’d agree. But, this isn’t the case. Healthcare has become more complicated, competitive, and future focused. Meanwhile, CVS has become an integrated pharmacy company with a wide and growing breadth of capabilities.

CVS No Longer Smokes Customers

Punching customers in the face and then offering to dress their wounds isn’t consistent thinking and it isn’t good business. With smoking being the leading cause of premature disease and death in the United States and it exacerbating other conditions like hypertension and diabetes, it no longer makes sense for a healthy-human centered business to continue supporting such a deadly habit.

A Polarizing Decision
The decision to stop selling cigarettes and tobacco related product is polarizing. CVS customers that smoke will now likely shop elsewhere for cigarettes and other needed items as well. But, the nonsmoker audience that already eschewed tobacco products will likely see the company as more committed to its promise of helping people on their path to better health. This change actually frees up CVS from conflicting and confusing messages as they begin to offer smoking cessation therapy and engage on a national smoking cessation program.

A Courageous Decision
It is as though CVS is saying, “If you want a serious pharmacy that is interested in making and keeping people healthy, then come to CVS. But, if you demand a nicotine fix from your local pharmacy in addition to making other purchases, then please shop elsewhere.” Saying something IS saying something. CVS will likely attract a multitude of new customers who believe that taking a stand against smoking, is taking a stand towards healthier communities.

“We’ve got 26,000 pharmacists and nurse practitioners who are helping millions of patients each and every day,” said Larry Merlo, the chief executive of CVS Caremark.

In my book, The Experience Design BLUEPRINT: Recipes for Creating Happier Customers and Healthier Organizations, one of the recipes I share is especially relevant to this story. It is also relevant to every organization you’ll ever be a part of.

From the book:
Recipe #3: Write the Future You Want
Create the stories that you wished customers would retell. Write these down. In Chapter 7: Improving the Journey, you’ll learn some tools and techniques to intentionally design these new customer journeys.

Imagine the powerful stories told by the millions of patients that are helped by the 26,000 pharmacists and nurse practitioners serving across 7,600 CVS stores. Stories about managing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, kicking the smoking habit, getting flu shots, alleviating symptoms, managing diseases, etc. In short, stories about getting healthier, being more comfortable, and managing diseases throughout our human journey.

With customers (patients) at the center of focus and with the future in mind, opportunities abound. CVS and its stakeholders can design new services that win the hearts and minds of customers, increase employee engagement, more than offset the lost revenue from cigarette sales, and ultimately lower the cost of healthcare. But, the product to cut or shape shouldn’t begin and end with cigarettes alone. Fully embracing Recipe #3 will have CVS moving toward a future where other current products are scrutinized and similarly dropped, while other products might be newly introduced. Again, it all depends upon the stories we wish our customers to recall and tell others.

Greg Olson is the author of The Experience Design BLUEPRINT: Recipes for Creating Happier Customers and Healthier Organizations. See the Book and Author Summary PDF or find the book on Amazon.

February 1, 2014October 2, 2023

What Patient Experience? The Hardest Problems are Invisible and Require New Thinking to Solve

The Patient Journey Starts Before and Ends Long After the Patient Sees the Caregiver

As much emphasis that is placed on patient care and better health, there is an invisible trauma inflicted on patients everyday. Patient experience problems extend beyond the point of care. Misinformation, poor customer service and communications, time wasted, lack of respect, etc. all diminish the positive attributes of medical care. At its worst patients dread the very thing that will make them better.

“First, do no harm” is part of Aim #1: Health Care Must Be Safe in the “Implementing the Quality Chasm Report” a resource from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. While it is necessary for healthcare providers to adopt such a maxim it alone is not sufficient to ensure that harm is not done to patients.

Because the patient experience involves more than the interaction with the caregiver, the physician or nurse alone cannot ensure a great experience. Communications online and with reception staff, lab and testing interactions, and patient billing post services all impact the overall quality of the patient experience. One patient interview revealed angst over an unpaid bill for services provided that the insurance company deemed out of network, even though the specialist the patient saw was in the facilities of the in network provider. The patient was not informed of this nor were they provided any options to visit other specialists. The provider has left a poor brand aftertaste in the mind of the patient who after a year, still refuses to pay the bill, “until things are sorted out”.

The maxim that has guided healthcare professionals for millennia doesn’t penetrate deep enough into the health care system. Employing systems level thinking, and mapping the entire patient journey across all touchpoints can reveal many insights into reducing harm, improving patient care and identifying organizational execution gaps. Results include increased organizational effectiveness, reduced staff turnover, and happier patients and families.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

Patient Experience Problems Span Organizations

Part of the challenge of fixing problems such as healthcare is that the patient experience and problems span many organizations. No one hospital, insurance company or collective can solve the entire problem on their own. Each type of organization has their bias and perspective. Still there exists many opportunities to improve within each organization. To provide remarkable cost effective patient care requires an objective view that spans organizations while never losing sight of the patient perspective. When this happens, we will all feel transformation in a system that today continues to inflict harm to patients.

Get Started: Cure Patient Experience Problems

Charter a team with a vision for improving the patient experience
Get an outsider to facilitate the process
Prioritize and map the patient journeys
Prioritize & implement high impact improvement projects

Want to try it on your own?

Change the conversation in your organization by improving your team’s experience vocabulary. Learn how patients see the healthcare experience differently than you do. Learn about the experience honeycomb, experience hoop and halo, and how to model patient experiences. Then learn how to apply filters, lenses, and levers to improve experiences for patients and for staff. Paying attention to your promise delivery system and the three psychological zones can move a stumbling team forward, turning lackluster experiences into experiences that are remarkable for patients, guests, and caregivers.

The book, The Experience Design BLUEPRINT: Recipes for Creating Happier Customers and Healthier Organizations, contains 25 examples, 78 images, and 56 recipes that you can immediately apply to your organization no matter the size and type of your organization. Click the image to get the Kindle formatted book that is readable on nearly any device including Kindle, Smartphones, Tablets, Mac or PC, even a web browser. Download the one page book summary along with author contact information. Please reach out if you’d like some help.

June 20, 2013September 17, 2023

If You Want New Outcomes try Changing your Language and Conversation

From Healthcare
The American Medical Association this week voted to declare obesity a disease. This, in a move to change the focus from treating obesity related symptoms, toward prevention. Without the label of disease, insurance companies have largely rejected insurance claims. And, without reimbursements, doctors are reluctant to have conversations about prevention. Prevention, it turns out, has been a big money loser. What has worked is treating the symptoms of obesity – those claims are reimbursed as normal and customary. Sadly, aside from people remaining unhealthy, this practice also increases the costs of an already overburdened healthcare system. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, treatment of obesity-related illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers drives up the nation’s medical bill by more than $150 billion each year.

To Homelessness
The Executive Director of a nonprofit that serves women experiencing homelessness once shared with me a story about a woman that visited her as her last stop in getting help. The women said, “Why do I have to lose everything in order to get any help.” Think about it for a moment, there are homeless and housed. What about those in transition from being homeowners to homeless. Our limited language here also limits our thinking and creative solutions that might be beneficial for all involved. I can imagine an organization that would maintain payments for this person while they sell their home, possibly rebuilding a new life from the equity. Without such an organization, the home is returned to bank and the person loses their equity and a new beginning. This is a situation where everybody loses.

To Developing Nations
The former CEO of World Bicycle Relief shared with me that in Zambia, one place where they sell their rugged bicycles (trucks), there is no word for maintenance. Imagine what that means. If there is no word, then the concept doesn’t exist. Not surprisingly, many broken down and abandoned bicycles litter the landscape. One of his organization’s aims was to not only introduce bicycles as a path to improving lives, but also introduce the idea and provide training for bicycle mechanics and inventory. This is life changing for many.

And in Your Business Too.
We also need new language and better conversations between business leaders, creatives, and customer facing roles, so that we can create and deliver more remarkable experiences to those being served by the organization. We also need to understand better, how and where our big ideas and decisions fit into improving the health of the organization. For this we need new eyes, new thinking, and new conversations. I’m doing my part – I’ve written The Experience Design Blueprint: Recipes for Creating Happier Customers and Healthier Organizations. If you want to get past boring experiences and sputtering performance and get to remarkable and sustainable, you might want to read it. Please share with other like minded individuals that want to do their part to make this world a little better for those that inhabit it today and in the future.

About The Author

Gregory Olson’s latest book is L’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book about a brighter future where we live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans. Greg also authored The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true.

Chapters in The Experience Design Blueprint that especially pertain to this post are those chapters in Section 2 – Making a Bigger Imprint:

Chapter 9: The Neighborhood
Chapter 12: The Three Psychological Zones
Chapter 13: Taking Flight

Gregory Olson founded strategy and design firm Delightability, LLC. with the belief that if you delight customers then success will follow. He believes that we all have the potential to do better, as individuals, organizations, and communities, but sometimes we need a little help. Gregory also serves as a volunteer board member for Oikocredit Northwest, a support association for social investor and financial institution, Oikocredit International.

May 3, 2011September 15, 2023

Road Signs & Signals Along the Customer Journey

How are you doing with customers? How do you know? Which touchpoints matter the most in the customer journey, to your organization and to your customers? Are they the same? Do you even know what the customer journey looks like? Have you mapped the customer experience across all touchpoints? What does the conversation in your organization look like surrounding this?

It turns out that much of what I’m describing is invisible. For most, Key Performance Indicators related to the customer’s experience largely reflect, how many people were exposed, how many bought, and how many returned or got help. But, those are only base indicators. In a world with a new customer high bar you need to go beyond base indicators. You need to understand what is important from your customers perspective, when, and where. You need to understand this at each touchpoint. “Yeah yeah, customer service has that,” you say. But they really don’t until you dig for it. And when it isn’t easy to dig for it, you don’t. Likewise for your prospective customer. They don’t want to dig either.

“don’t be fooled into thinking that is good enough”

Prospective customers are motivated to do something when they arrive on your digital or analog doorstep Continue reading “Road Signs & Signals Along the Customer Journey”