The Patient's Voice: Why Consumers Matter in Healthcare Marketing

Consistent with NRC Health’s call for health organizations to take a broad view of experience, this nSight focuses on the financial experience in healthcare. While the billing and payment process is not under the direct control of patient experience leaders, confusion around the process has a direct, detrimental effect on the overall perception of care. 

Healthcare brands – organizations providing healthcare – face an invisible and intimidating force: homogenization. The pandemic further knotted healthcare brands together in consumers’ minds and created a full-on brand blur.

Our July nSight demonstrated that, nationally, emotional or mental health (‘mental health’) reported by patients has been declining over the past decade. In parallel, the evolving understanding of – and willingness to talk about – mental and behavioral health has helped reduce longstanding stigmas, generating unprecedented demand for services. 

Given that addressing mental and behavioral health is one of the most pressing healthcare needs in the United States, it’s essential to be clear about what these terms mean

Improving the experience of care is a key to improving health outcomes. Yet in a sea of competing priorities and information overflow, understanding where to start can be daunting.

The use of AI technologies in healthcare is rapidly becoming more widespread. But at this early stage of widespread AI adoption, patients have clear preferences as to which AI tools they perceive as useful and which they view with suspicion.

Patients who are treated by their physicians as unique individuals and not as a category of diseases experience their healthcare journey in a more positive light. However, organizations are struggling to deliver such personalized patient experiences.

The concept of human understanding revolves around finding ways to treat patients as unique individuals and personalize each patient's experiences in every interaction with the healthcare system.