With the pandemic increasingly in the rearview mirror, many healthcare organizations are coming to terms with the big and small changes that have become permanent parts of the healthcare landscape. Ushered in during the pandemic, omnichannel care delivery is now a fixture and will play an influential role for many years to come; that’s a good thing, as patients prefer having options and are often enthusiastic about new channels, technologies and treatments. More caregivers now see the value of omnichannel care, especially telehealth and in-home care, because they work so well for patients.    

In our recent work with clients, we’ve seen how different types of healthcare organizations can capitalize on leading practices for change and transformation as they seek to refine, optimize and expand their omnichannel clinical care models.  

The common denominator with healthcare leaders is human centricity. Organizations that successfully drive change design their care models around what patients want and need. Similarly, organizations that adopt a human-centered approach to transformation are more likely to succeed in winning hearts and minds, instilling new behaviors and changing the culture in sustainable ways.  

1. When transforming the clinical care model, start small and iterate fast. 

There are ample transformation opportunities across healthcare but organizations that take on too much change too fast are bound to struggle. The key is to focus on the achievable while understanding the distinct needs of underserved populations and addressing drivers of high cost. 

Organizing around a condition or a use case, rather than a service line, can be useful both for making progress and setting up for broader change over the long term. Breaking down big changes into manageable steps is the only way to go. For example, to redesign diabetes care, leaders will need first to address issues typically treated by primary care, endocrinologists and cardiologists, as well as supporting clinicians in nutrition and other related aspects of care.  

Our work with one national player confirmed how many patients with kidney failure “crash” into dialysis in an unplanned fashion when longitudinal care models can address the holistic needs of such patients. When Geisinger launched a home care program, it realized impressive results, including reduced ER visits and lower costs, largely due to its careful patient selection, a focus on chronic conditions and proactive outreach by care teams.   

Within value-based care models, better patient communication can increase HCAHPS scores, which directly impacts reimbursement. That’s a relatively small-bore change that can yield potentially big results. 

2. Recognize that every healthcare organization is also a software company. And an AI and data science firm, too.  

Whether or not they want to be, all types of healthcare companies are in the technology business – and we’re not referring exclusively to electronic medical records (EMRs). Software now underpins every step of the care delivery process and is essential to making the “anytime care from anywhere” vision a workable operational reality. And yet, there’s no denying that tech has contributed to significant burnout among healthcare workers, including physicians.  

Healthcare organizations would benefit from several tech innovations, including agile sprints and experience design principles, to continuously enhance features. Had EMRs been designed in this manner, they would more seamlessly fit into the clinical workflow and not contribute to provider burnout as they are today. Healthcare organizations can take a similar approach as they design omnichannel care delivery models and deploy new technology.  

Thinking like a service designer will help orchestrate the linkages between backstage systems and data sources and, ultimately, create a seamless experience for all types of users. Accommodating the needs of users with different levels of technology access and literacy – including both patients and caregivers – is the key to developing high-impact solutions. When designing a patient app for patients receiving home dialysis, we went through multiple rounds of design and user testing to ensure that the experience met patient needs in an intuitive way and delivered the right information at the right time. That’s how to empower – rather than overwhelm – users.  

Organizations must also change the perception, common after initial rollouts of EMR systems, that technology is the enemy. One way to overcome that persistent bias is to co-create solutions with patients, caregivers and providers. That’s what we did with a national player seeking to shift the site of care from clinics and inpatient settings to the home. Service designers worked directly with nurses and nurse practitioners who could speak empathetically to the day-to-day needs and challenges faced by home healthcare teams and provide feedback on initial design sketches. These foundational insights, as well as those from patient groups, guided the design of new tools.  

AI Goes Everywhere

There’s no talking about tech without talking about artificial intelligence (AI). AI seems to be taking over healthcare. Payers are using it to digitize claims, conduct audits and monitor payments. Clinically, AI is helping physicians scan X-rays and get ahead of emerging risks and adverse outcomes. Providers use AI to design care paths, personalize care coordination and model the financial impacts of different treatment plans. AI promises to revolutionize clinical trials in the pharmaceutical sector.  

Embedding AI-enabled technology deeply into care delivery processes can make routine tasks simpler, faster and safer. And it’s the most effective way to use technology as a “force multiplier” in delivering care, which is the primary motivation for many healthcare organizations that acquire technology companies. Technology that enables caregivers to do their jobs more effectively and operate at the top of their licenses is invaluable in a time of provider shortages. Equipping end-users (including physicians) with training, skills and knowledge to use the right tech at the right time is how tech can directly support better outcomes.  

That sort of human-centered approach is necessary to change minds, create advocates and smooth the transition as the organization evolves from being healthcare-centric to thinking and acting like tech, AI and data science companies.  

3. Transformation takes an ecosystem.  

Achieving ambitious change objectives will almost certainly require collaboration with others – including payers, specialty care providers, technology companies or other third parties. So finding the right partners is critical, even when focusing on a manageable, well-defined issue or opportunity.  

The massive complexity of healthcare – both as a business and in terms of delivering care – makes broad organizational buy-in an absolute imperative for effective transformation. Overlooking a key constituency can make the difference between success and failure.  

We define stakeholders as anyone playing a role in care or invested in its outcomes. Thus, the universe of stakeholders includes everyone from institutions (e.g., payers and large employers) to back-stage actors (e.g., hospital management, pharmacies) to front-line care providers (e.g., PCPs, specialists, therapists, care coordinators, social workers) and, of course, patients who must remain at the center. These stakeholders have wildly different incentives, hold different values and operate with different information and authority. 

The broadest ecosystems require teams to think like systems designers in working outward from the patient to the entire stakeholder ecosystem, including front-stage actors (e.g., caregivers, PCPs and specialists) and back-stage actors (e.g., care managers, pharmacists, hospitals, payers, regulators).  

Ecosystem design requires incorporating the needs and perspectives of many different stakeholders.  

All of these players have widely different incentives, hold different values and operate with different information and authority. Misalignment among ecosystem partners can manifest in systemic problems that reach deeper than any single touchpoint. When we design healthcare ecosystems, we apply such principles to understand current systems and envision those that will be necessary tomorrow. Design tools such as ecosystem and value exchange mapping are a critical part of incorporating the entire innovation ecosystem into specific solutions. 

Leveraging Internal Ecosystems

The most successful transformation programs also involve many different internal constituencies. One Fortune 500 healthcare organization seeking to disrupt renal care with increased use of in-home dialysis built a diverse, cross-functional team, including digital strategists, product teams, client nurses, nephrologists and other specialists, in its ideation process. It gathered ongoing input via iterative design and feedback sessions. The testing process of initial solutions involved 40+ external users, including patients, nurses and other caregivers and social workers.  

Organizations enacting large-scale strategic change often convene a leadership council for regular reviews and feedback. Typically, such groups include chief medical officers, clinical business unit leaders, medical specialists and senior operational and administrative leaders.  

4. Embrace regulation and payer mandates as inspiration for innovation.  

The expanding adoption of value-based care shows how regulatory requirements can prompt necessary change for organizations with creative leadership and high degrees of operational agility. By default, many leaders resist new rules and love to complain about old ones, which can lead to regulatory oversight being used as an excuse not to change.  

Federal regulators are certainly looking to foster innovation and prompt greater use of in-home dialysis via reimbursement changes in kidney care and other areas. The acute shortage of clinicians is another area where regulators are likely to be flexible in allowing healthcare organizations to experiment with new care delivery options. Consider how pandemic-era stop-gap measures to allow providers to practice telemedicine across state lines have remained in place. We believe the clinician shortage is an existential threat that must be at the forefront of the design of omnichannel care delivery models. Certainly, it will force provider organizations to automate more low-value tasks as they seek to expand their reach.  

Social determinants of health (SDoH) are also being incorporated into regulatory frameworks as their importance to health becomes clearer. Medicaid changes are more likely in the short term, with Medicare following suit in the long term. Organizations that are proactive in developing solutions – ideally in collaboration with regulators and other partners – will be positioned for future success.  

Working with a national provider organization to address the needs of diabetes patients, we focused on SDoH in determining how to shift the site of care to the home. Patients with mobility issues, those that lived in food deserts, or lacked reliable WiFi for remote diagnostics each required different design decisions. As innovation strategies more frequently intersect with regulatory requirements, we help clients think through the implications and find opportunities to streamline compliance processes as an outgrowth of experience design and technology development.  

5. You can’t change your clinical care model without changing your business model.     

This might be the hardest challenge in healthcare, because of the frequent tension between what’s good for patients and what’s good for the bottom line. In theory, clinical care organizations can find the financial backing to move to a more consumer-centric clinical care model in one of two ways:    

• Improving patient loyalty and outcomes to become a recognized market leader or provider of choice, with the net effect of boosting both patient volumes and financial returns. 
• Maximizing reimbursement for all kinds of clinical care services including those delivered outside the traditional clinic.    

We’ve found the first is a harder recipe for success and following it can lead to internal disbelief at best and barriers at worst. Financial incentives need to align with care incentives. Organizations that invest in transforming their care model should expect to realize financial rewards or at least figure out how to get paid for providing services that benefit patients.  

To make it happen, we have helped strong leaders think outside of existing markets to create new categories of care based on patient needs. To model the potential for a new home health business that a diversified healthcare giant was launching, we created a consensus view of existing service lines that could be brought together to meet patient needs in the home, from infusions, to telehealth, to diagnostics and monitoring. Here again, the key was getting stakeholders to collaborate and communicate in new ways.  

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The most lasting change of the pandemic is likely the “digital load shift,” as people rapidly adopted new tech habits that experts once thought would take years to establish.

These behaviors have radically changed the way people experience the world. They’re buying houses they’ve never physically stepped inside, working with people they’ve never met in real life and investing in stocks recommended by their social-media community.

Even as COVID-19 vaccination rates, this digital load shift is here to stay, and with it are increasing privacy concerns and higher expectations for what a “good” experience feels like. Better-informed consumers are demanding more from the devices, networks and brands they use. For financial-services companies during their own digital transformations, this presents a valuable opportunity to re-assess priorities across their own digital roadmaps.

A Growing Sense of Vulnerability

It’s not entirely accurate to link consumers’ growing wariness to the pandemic. Certainly, the 2018 Facebook/Cambridge Analytics scandal rattled trust in Big Tech. And the mistrust doesn’t stop there. “The Social Dilemma,” a Netflix documentary detailing the ways companies like Google and Facebook manipulate consumers, was one of the most popular releases last year Google, at least for the moment, has an edge in the battle for trust, with 66% of people saying they generally trust it, versus just 38% for Facebook).

As companies try and move past the pandemic, they must address these suspicions. If businesses want people to share data, they need to offer more in return, including greater customer control over the data, transparency in how it is used, and greater value for data exchanged.

It’s not likely people will cut back on their digital life. American adults now spend 16-plus hours per day with digital media, up 25% from pre-pandemic levels. But they’re smarter, with 54% saying COVID-19 has made them more aware of the personal data they share.

While they are alert to high-profile breaches, 50% say they are still willing to share – as long as they get a fair value in return. The majority – 56% – want more control and better information about how that information will be used. Google Pay, for example, has released a control center for users to control their data for personalization, payments profile and transactions and activities.

Linking Digital Experiences

Winning with these skeptical consumers will become more difficult as the load shift from analog to digital channels accelerates.

“They’ll increasingly expect experiences that link and mutually enforce each other across all other channels.”

Consumer preferences and behavior have leapfrogged by years and 75% of consumers say they’ll continue using the digital channels they’ve started to use during the pandemic. This spans across age groups and channels. About 44% of consumers say the pandemic has led them to use their banking apps more. Some 71% of consumers aged 55 and older prefer an internet chat/video insurance claim process to replace the traditional in-office approach. Two-thirds of consumers prefer to book and reschedule appointments online rather than over the phone.

Forward-looking firms know these changes are here to stay and are actively solving for the new future state, rather than trying to play catch up to the 2019 status quo. About 86% of financial services executives plan to increase their AI-related investments through 2025. One-third of banks plan to increase spending on digital channels over the next year.

Emerging as a category leader takes exceptional strategic innovation and a digital roadmap that can adapt to unforeseen market changes.

Capital One, for example, uses cloud and artificial intelligence to connect customer experience across all touchpoints. Prospect and customer feedback is gathered across channels and stages of the journey and is synthesized using natural language processing to optimize the experience. As the first U.S. bank to operate completely on the cloud, Capital One uses cloud data systems to maintain a unified customer view across all channels.

As financial services companies transition from analog to digital experiences, they must follow consumer preferences closely to innovate more quickly. It’s more than having the right technology to deliver those experiences – it’s cohesively linking those experiences across channels.

Three Ways to Strengthen Digital Trust and Reinforce Omnichannel Experiences

1) Create an “opt-in” strategy

Include methods for asking for “opt-in,” centralizing how prospects and customers can manage their data within the ecosystem.

2) Perform qualitative research to understand the importance of data control in experiences.

Audit prospect and customer touchpoints that request data. Is it clear how data will be used? Is the value exchange meaningful and easy to understand?

3) Define existing and new opportunities for points of convergence.

To develop mutually reinforcing and cohesive multichannel experiences, companies must prioritize opportunities. Which experiences are most desirable to our customers? Are they viable for our industry? Are they feasible for our business? Leaders must adapt their transformation roadmaps to make sure both experience design and technology builds toward this convergence.

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In the last 15 months, the world has vaulted years ahead in digital acceptance. As consumers gain tech experience, their standards get higher. They’ve developed the ability to tune out fake empathy and cringe at personalization efforts that are either lame or creepy.

Yet empathy counts more than it ever has before. During the pandemic, unemployment because of a harsh reality, many individuals lost or were separated from loved ones, several were forced to postpone milestone moments and no one was able to participate in the communities that made them feel the happiest and safe.  Brands and companies that build true connections are those that understand that context is everything. Personalization is only relevant and timely when it relates to what prospects and customers are going through at that moment.

Financial services companies have a clear advantage compared to other industries, with more data-driven insights that reveal specific struggles. While not every family’s finances have been impacted, 51% of consumers added to their credit card debt during the pandemic. Additionally, Pew Research reports 27% of consumers are worried about the cost of healthcare.

Catch Up With Missed Milestones

Financial services companies can improve personalization efforts by helping people catch up with milestones. The weddings, graduation ceremonies and retirement parties that were put on hold due to COVID-19 left emotional holes. Consumers are still coming to terms with the impact of that disruption. And as vaccination rates rise and cases drop, people are looking to reclaim those “lost” moments.

Weddings are a happy example. The Knot predicts this year will be the biggest wedding year ever, increasing by 20 to 25%. And many couples who got hitched during the pandemic will celebrate with a long-delayed bash.

Moving house – always a significant financial transition – has also taken on outsize proportions, with millions of millennials struggling to find affordable homes. They are trying to navigate a real-estate reality that’s markedly different, not just because of the pandemic. Housing prices are soaring, up 23.6% – a record increase. And after two decades of declining home construction, experts say America needs an additional 5.5 million units.

It’s a market more confusing than their parents ever faced­. Instead of buying dream houses or starter homes that make them feel financially comfortable, they’re often stuck. They need content that helps them make the best choices and financial partners that understand their frustrations and disappointments.

Consumers also need support for events that aren’t happening. The birthrate has been falling for some time, but experts believe COVID-19 caused a further 8.6% decline. Again, this loss is felt more keenly among millennial women.

But baby boomers and Gen Xers are taking some emotional lumps, too. About 40% of retirement savers say the pandemic has shaken their confidence in their financial plans, and 32% in their 50s plan to delay retirement as a result.

Even more disruptive? Nearly 2 million older Americans have been forced out of work into a retirement they aren’t quite ready for.

To handle these curveballs, people need new planning tools, focused content and a tone that recognizes new challenges. Even automated content needs to be more human, sensing what consumers crave at each touchpoint.

Understanding The Pandemic’s Lasting Economic Impacts on Women

The pandemic fundamentally altered life for many women in deep and profound ways. Not only did women lose more jobs than men, but one in four employed women have considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers, according to Lean In. The pandemic also pushed women to take on multiple roles including juggling more family responsibilities. Lean In says moms are 1.5 times more likely to be spending three or more hours a day on housework and childcare.

And while many companies just spouted generic “We’re here for you” messaging, some built genuine relationships. For instance, fintechs like Betterment and Ellevest are personalizing marketing and content messaging to emphasize what female customers can do for themselves in light of COVID career setbacks and how they can help other women directly impacted by the pandemic.

These enormous problems will shape family life for years to come. Companies that tailor valuable content, compassionate messaging and thoughtful timing can achieve relevance. Those that don’t risk getting dismissed or, worse, alienating a key customer base.

Three Ways Financial Services Companies Can Dial-Up Empathy

1) Give existing marketing messaging a compassion check-up.

How should personalization strategy change given the effects of the pandemic on life events? Which use-cases should take priority? How can marketing and content be more empathetic to new realities?

2) Identify changes in customer needs across the journey.

Using consumer interviews and behavioral insights, identify how customer needs have shifted because of the pandemic’s wide-sweeping effects and how that impacts their customer journey. How might products and services need to adapt to best meet these needs?

3) Develop personalized experiences around life events that are more likely to occur post-pandemic.

From the brand’s perspective, prioritize the most relevant life events that relate to the customer journey and develop personalized touchpoints for them.

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