Who Is The Customer In Healthcare?

Exactly who is the customer in healthcare? With so much discussion going on right now about the future of healthcare and the system that needs changing, I find it incredibly shocking that most commentaries are not focused on the customer. This is why I would like to bring overall clarity to the very complex and challenging question of how to successfully reform the healthcare system, through the identification of customers and the needs each type holds sacred.

The primary customer may be defined as the Patient, the Patient's Family, the Physician and Physician Groups, and Society-at-large. Secondary customers may include provider staff such as Nursing or other Caregiver staff, Specialty Helpers such as those found in Operating Rooms, the Local Community & other Stakeholders, Investors, and Regulatory groups such as accreditation or enforcement bodies from governmental sources. Tertiery customers include Health Insurance Companies, the Hospital Leadership, hospital Equipment & Disposable Vendors, Consultants, Ranking Agencies like Health Grades, Watchdog groups, Medicare and Medicaid, Healthcare Futurists, Congress and the White House, and myriad Product and Service Providers bringing innovation and proven assistance to current players in the health marketplace.

Wow, that is a huge amount of potential customership! Each group has it's own set of needs and there are even subgroups within each that have very different needs and desires. No wonder healthcare reform is so challenging. Still, if we addressed the needs of the primary customer types, what might we find in terms of similarities of needs?

I recently picked up a white paper published by HFMA (Healthcare Financial Management Association) that demonstrated this technique quite well. In the piece, two insets on opposite pages showed the needs distinctions and surprising similarities of hospital decision-makers and physicians working in relationship to the hospital. This demonstrated a time-honored principal of negotiations: find common ground and build from there. The epiphany that popped up for me: redesigning our healthcare future will not be so daunting if we can sort out all needs of all customer types, then find common ground from which to build. I wonder if the candidates for president are willing to find this relatively simple approach to healthcare reform useful. Has any of the remaining 3 viable candidates revealed a solution based on listening to customer types for needs?

Sometimes I find other bloggers who express a need to listen to our constituents. Who among these readers and writers see a direct connection between understanding customers and finding a meaningful and lasting approach to healthcare reform?

For a deeper look at how one health system is taking on the challenge at a local level, see Medical City's Britt Barrett's continued works about creating a special culture in his Dallas, TX health system. If you'd like to discover case studies that speak to customer-centered decision-making for healthcare, look into works by Meg Columbia-Walsh of CommonHealth and Shel Holtz of Holtz Communication + Technology.

----Michael