The Patient Experience: Creating Value Beyond Just Outcome

Dear CSS Members and Colleagues:

The post-pandemic healthcare world will present many new challenges and it will re-define how we measure value of care. While measuring outcomes and improving them is the principle goal for all surgeons, patient experience may well be what defines value. I would anticipate that Mergers and Acquisitions will redefine healthcare to a degree, as distressed healthcare ventures are acquired by larger entities. This risks all of us becoming commoditized just like the anchors we use for rotator cuff repair. Patients will have a difficult time differentiating individual physicians from the Brand in which they work, and even within large brand organizations like Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, HSS, and MGH it will be hard to differentiate care givers for the same type of surgical procedure. To this end, the experience + the outcome will drive our differentiation. Thus, I offer you two articles. The first speaks to the “Innovating Experience” and offers the concept of Value = Experience – Expectations. The second is a summary of a book entitled “If Disney Ran your Hospital”. I prepared this for my office staff in order to re-define how we treat patients from the standpoint of customer service. I hope you find these informative and useful to your strategy of patient care going forward.

Best Regards,

“JP” Warner, MD

Founder, The CSS