As the healthcare sector becomes more and more patient-oriented, hospitals are changing their approach to delivering care. The personal requirements of the patients have innovated, and hence, the services also demand improvisation. For example, patients want the decision-making role. They want greater involvement because they have access to the internet and get knowledge about everything they want. Hence, healthcare providers and payers use information technology and communication strategies to let patients sit in the driver's seat and decide their health. Another major step that has shaped the healthcare sector significantly is the service-design approach from patient's journey mapping to addressing the shortcomings, a successful healthcare business leveraging service design for their digital-savvy patients or customers. Sometimes, outsourcing to healthcare BPO companies is a profitable deal, but if you have a dedicated combination of people, processes, and tools, you can survive without outsourcing.
What do we understand by service design?
Service design is the same as experience design, but it is a broader concept. In terms of healthcare service design, the key areas are – people, process, and technology. Here, people are the patients for providers or customers/ members for payers. An example of a process could be how a patient can book an appointment with a physician or hospital. The technology could be anything- from self-service apps to signage to a website.
Service design leverage UX design principles and studies the connections between person-to-person and patient to the digital medium. The human-centric design makes the process more comprehensive. It uniformly focuses on all functional areas like finance, scheduling, customer service, medical records, etc.
A service design methodology carried out by healthcare BPO companies help unifies teams across the different department in your healthcare organization. They also provide a shared idea of customer experience across silos.
Adopting a service-design approach
Empathy is the key to a successful service-design implementation in a healthcare organization. A patient's journey – both pre-and post-discharge can be streamlined with empathy-led business solutions. However, more profound communication across every touchpoint in the patient's journey can sometimes expose obstacles and problems.
For instance, a clinic should understand why patients are not booking appointments. Finding a hypothesis and coming to a conclusion without surveying patients is not possible. By infusing empathy in communication and by conducting research and analysis, the service-design approach can be adopted. Hence, outsourcing partners act as a helping hand for the digitization of healthcare, data-based decision-making, and better patient care.
What are the challenges in healthcare service design?
The Healthcare sector is complicated, and sometimes, regulatory compliance or security issues can delay operations. It leads to patient dissatisfaction. To manage everything while implementing service design, you require a team of specialists.
Patients can enter and exit at multiple touchpoints. It isn't easy to measure their expectations, socioeconomic factors, and lifestyle. Apart from that, conditions like anxiety and hypertension occur during the time of surgery or critical care.
- Overcoming the challenges
- While executing service design practices, you can learn a few things:
- Start from “what customers want.”
- Generate problem statements from their needs.
- Consider the probable problems to address and which ones have a greater impact on the patient experience.
- Establish a vision that meets customers' needs.
- Become patient-centered when creating solutions.
- Design every touchpoint — those noticeable to patients and those that are behind the scenes.
- Work towards tangible outcomes for patients, clinics, and support staff
- Restructure organizations to manage customer pain points
Finally
When directed right, the impact of pain, perception, and perseverance can provide a friction-free experience for patients. Healthcare BPO companies also offer telehealth services, pharmacy assistance, prescription filling, and other value-added support so that providers can focus on better patient care, faster operations, and leverage technology to create a unique competitive advantage.
