Health care has practically no custom of allowing the perspective of patients as mission-critical. That's because in health care, the payment system creates confusion about who the customer really is. Patients often make different demands than health plans or Medicare. Providers meet the needs of both, but the check-writer tends to come first.
Providers also discharge the perspective of patients because they aren't experts in clinical medicine, or in the scientific principles of defining and measuring high quality care. The timing of dinner doesn't appear in medical textbooks as an evidence-based best practice.
Today, there's a new buzzword in the industry: "patient-reported outcomes and it even comes with its own acronym (PRO). Hospitals are now mandatory to conduct standardized patient surveys following discharge, and their payment from Medicare is partly based on those results.
We are also seeing pioneering ways to solicit patient feedback, such as cellphone surveys and social media. Hospitals and health plans are using this data systematically to track consumer comment as a way to gauge overall quality of care. Policy makers and purchasers are increasingly incorporating patient reported outcomes into the criteria for payment and ratings of hospitals and physicians.
Leadership is taking note: The hospital industry invented a new job, the "chief experience officer," to check patient feedback and drive change accordingly. Many hospitals have formed patient and family review committees that advise on a wide variety of operational and clinical issues.
Private-sector employers are also getting in on the action. A white paper by the Pacific Business Group on Health made a call for robust integration of patient perspectives into all phases of quality improvement and business purchasing decisions.
Outside of health care, pivoting your priorities to your customer is hardly a breakthrough. But in health care this is the new front line. It's a welcome departure from the tradition of keeping patients off the radar.
