Creating the Consumer Value Chain in Healthcare

A Roadmap for a Simpler Consumer Experience

Whitepaper | Spencer Cross


Director, Product Management, Change Healthcare Connected Consumer Health

Spencer leads consumer experience product management at Change Healthcare. He works to help customers capture value through advanced consumer engagement capabilities.

In a healthcare marketplace increasingly shaped by consumer choice, organizations that focus on improving the consumer journey will help future-proof their business models. Payers that deliver a unified consumer experience can reach further downstream to drive outcomes; providers who adopt similar strategies will be able to reach upstream to attract more consumers.

Creating value for consumers through a connected, intuitive consumer experience (versus the pursuit of strategies primarily aimed at meeting internal business objectives) helps both payers and providers boost engagement, compliance, loyalty, and retention. Achieving these goals, in turn, supports value-based care requirements and ultimately enhances economic sustainability.

Streamlining the consumer journey requires that organizations aggregate and share data and provide tools that allow consumers to easily navigate their care ecosystem in pursuit of smarter healthcare decisions. Importantly, that means encountering less friction when it comes to selection, access, and payment.

Embracing the e-Commerce Model

Healthcare organizations can learn much about how to accomplish these objectives from other industries. A major trend across multiple sectors has been the focus on omnichannel consumer journeys that both accelerate and simplify the purchase funnel and, at the same time, broaden new customer acquisition strategies. Beyond these established reach and simplification strategies, consumer industries have employed a variety of approaches to maximize the value of the consumer’s dollar and encourage loyalty. Using these approaches, companies across virtually every consumer sector have realized outsized growth and retention in relation to their peers.1

A Dysfunctional System

Unfortunately, the healthcare industry lags far behind most other sectors when it comes to adopting similar approaches to help consumers find, access, and pay for care. Today’s healthcare consumer value chain is fragmented across a range of channels and entities and is impeded by disparate, incompatible data. Over two-thirds of consumers cannot complete the steps required to access care without crossing two or more entities and using multiple online and phone channels.2

A recent study commissioned by Change Healthcare that assessed consumer beliefs about healthcare underscores how dysfunctional the system feels from the patient perspective.3

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of consumers want and expect a digital experience that is similar to those provided in other retail sectors.4

Creating The Virtual Value Chain

Fortunately, IT solutions that replicate the consumer-centric platforms used in other areas finally are emerging across healthcare. These capabilities put patients and members at the center of their care ecosystem, and in so doing, deliver unprecedented value at each step in the journey.

Unified systems eliminate existing silos to access data from both the payer and provider sides, allowing the overall process to feel virtually seamless from the consumer’s perspective. The emergence of this kind of value chain—defined as a set of activities an organization carries out to deliver enhanced value to its customers—represents a fundamental break with legacy approaches and the negative perceptions and consequences that accompany them.

Unified systems eliminate existing silos to access data from both the payer and provider sides, allowing the overall process to feel virtually seamless from the consumer’s perspective. The emergence of this kind of value chain—defined as a set of activities an organization carries out to deliver enhanced value to its customers—represents a fundamental break with legacy approaches and the negative perceptions and consequences that accompany them.

  • Understand their cost of care up-front based on their plan specifics 
  • Easily identify quality, cost-effective providers 
  • Easily navigate and execute the scheduling and appointment process 
  • Pay for their services without delay or surprises

Connected Consumer Health™ Suite

Change Healthcare’s Connected Consumer Health™️ Suite is an integrated, scalable engagement platform that weaves together clinical, financial, and consumer-generated data into a rich digital experience that collectively creates the seamless digital experience so urgently needed in healthcare. Importantly, the suite is delivered in a software-as-a-service model with speedy deployment, no hardware to procure, and minimal IT resources required for customers to access and use the platform.

The foundation of this breakthrough is Change Healthcare’s existing networks and interoperability with both payers and providers. Our infrastructure, which is enabled via robust consumer identity, consent, and security processes, allows us to bridge the payer and provider data gap in support of a pain-free consumer experience.

1. Service industries can fuel growth by making digital customer experiences a priority, McKinsey Digital, April 30, 2020; The Digital Imperative: Health System Disrupter or Enabler?, AVIA, HFMA 2018 Annual Conference
2. 2020 Consumer Experience Index Report, Change Healthcare
3. Ibid
4. Ibid

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