Despite years of provider attention focused on getting out in front of consumerism, health system performance metrics remain centered on transactions rather than the strength of patient relationships.
Kaufman Hall’s 2023 State of the Healthcare Consumer Report explores the key findings distilled from a survey of 59 healthcare executives, each revolving around quantifying consumer relationships and incorporating that data into operations.
The use of consumer-focused measurement remains limited among health system leaders, and organizations over-rely on traditional transaction-focused metrics.
- An FFS model that incentivizes volume gives rise to performance metrics that track the same, such as visit volume (tracked by 100%), market share (89%), and revenue per visit (86%).
- Only half of respondents track at least one advanced consumer-focused measure, such as share of a patient’s total healthcare spend, their lifetime value to the system, or churn.
While traditional metrics provide valuable insights, they don’t capture the “stickiness” of patient relationships, a key driver of both better outcomes and business improvements.
- One exec noted that most health systems deliver a wide range of services, but they rarely package and articulate them to consumers in a way that provides more touch points along the care continuum.
- By contrast, financial-service companies lean in on consumer-facing metrics, which allows them to go after share of wallet and lifetime value through integrated solutions.
Kaufman Hall then offers a Glide Path to Success for health systems looking to recalibrate toward a more relationship-based strategy.
- Perform an assessment of each service line using consumer-centric metrics
- Identify loyalty drivers by analyzing how patient choices impact upstream utilization
- Identify services that could be improved or added to improve consumer metrics
- Measure ROI to determine whether changes are creating the expected return and pivot if they’re not
The Takeaway
If the industry intends to shift from volume to value, it’s important to continue asking what exactly it is that patients value in their healthcare. Asking them directly is an obvious option, but consumers vote every day with their wallets and their business, so tracking that data seems like a critical first step to delivering on what really matters.
