“Draw It for Me”: Creating Experience Truly Centered on the Patient

"The Point" Episode 2: “Draw It for Me”: Creating Experience Truly Centered on the Patient

Chris Ledford, The Grovery Operating Partner and VP Strategy: Welcome to this episode of “The Point,” where we discuss everything customer experience. I'm Chris Ledford, your host. I'm the managing director and chief strategist here at The Grovery. And I'm really excited to have the founder of Rx4CX here, an activation firm focused on customer experience. Great to see you, Rich.

Rich Schwartz, Founder of Rx4CX: Great to be here.

Chris: You are focused on customer experience. But in your formal intro, you said you're focused on the treatments that the healthcare industry needs to heal itself. That just ignited my imagination. What do you mean by that?

Rich: As an industry, part of what we do is observe and diagnose issues in individuals and in populations. We've become really good at it. We've become really good at finding what's wrong and understanding what treatment is necessary to get somebody to the best they could possibly be. We've become really good at looking at disease states and creating molecular entities to address those disease states. Yet when you look at the operations of healthcare broadly — from systems to payers to manufacturers to all the constituents surrounding it — we're not really good at diagnosing our own problems among each other and within our own ecosystems. Part of what I focus on is helping them understand: Where does it hurt? Where is it broken? Why is it broken? Why is it perpetuating? And what might we do about it? It's hard to get organizations and individuals to change if they don't see an endpoint.

Chris: And that's your treatment.

Rich: What's the future state you want or need — clinically, financially? Those are the things I address. I work across life sciences, but I also work with systems and payers.

Chris: What would the system look like if it was designed by patients — if they were able to call the shots and get the experience they want?

Rich: When you get a diagnosis for a chronic condition, it's like hearing, "I'm going to give you a full-time job. You're going to have it for the rest of your life. You're the CEO of this. It pays in reverse, and you're probably unqualified, and you're probably unprepared." That's the state that person is in. When you're scared, when you're confused, when you're faced with uncertainty — it's really hard. And all they really want at the end of the day is to not be sick. So how do we show up, with their help, as simply being more helpful for them?

Chris: Give me an example.

Rich: You're diagnosed with heart disease. You've never had it before. There's a quote attributed to Hippocrates: "It's more important to understand what sort of person has the disease than what sort of disease the person has." What is it they aspire to? What do they want in their life? What's going to fulfill them? Build around that.

Chris: We get so caught up in the operational aspect of things. How do we work against that?

Rich: There are a couple of things conspiring against us. There's the "tyranny of the quarter." These are businesses. Results are expected on a quarterly basis. If you walk into a room, you will hear everybody in manufacturing and industry say: "We're patient-centric." What else would you be? That's the end user of your product. But patient centricity became this thing people just threw out. It hit me one day — how do you define that? I remember sitting in a room and I said: "Can you draw that for me? What does patient centricity look like?" Most of the time, you're going to see the brand sitting in the center. And in everything we do — healthcare, walking into a restaurant or a coffee shop — we enter that equation with expectations. It's going to be a great cup of coffee. This is going to be a good doctor's visit. Our expectations, plus or minus reality — that's our experience. It's that simple. What we do with that understanding, to show up as more helpful and to resolve the challenges people are having — that's the management of the experience. That's the support of the experience.

Chris: So, "The Miracle Factory" is in full swing doing its job. But I, as someone who needs to benefit from the miracle, am fighting with my prior authorization, my benefits verification. I just got denied. It turns into that full-time job you were talking about. I've become the CEO of my health, and it's hard. It's not such a miracle anymore.

Rich: I need brands to be very focused on the things that break in and outside of their ecosystem and to understand — when a patient leaves your website, when they leave your call center — who else are they dealing with? Look at the systems map and understand that there are things you cannot, as a manufacturer, do anything about. But you need to know they're happening. Prior authorization shows up at the top of everybody's list. I call it "P soup." Patients, providers, physicians, PBMs, pharmacies, pharma. All of these entities. I want to believe everybody has the best interest of the patient in mind. So, let's figure out why we're making it hard.

Chris: We see this gap. We think: "Let's just sit down and figure it out." What's the root, as far as you can see? We're missing the most basic understanding of what a patient — a consumer — needs in any given situation. Why are we glossing over that? That's the foundation. That's the starting point of everything.

Rich: Why aren't we looking at how humans make decisions? In healthcare, there are hundreds if not thousands of financial, logistical, and clinical data points in front of every decision. But they're all in search of one emotional one.

Chris: You nailed it. It's emotion.

Rich: We buy with our hearts and we justify with our wallets.

Chris: The feeling I have when I walk out of that facility — or as I'm walking in — you've said it feels like a lifetime at the DMV once you've gotten a serious diagnosis. I know I'm heading into the waiting room of the DMV. I'm not happy. How do we pay attention to that?

Rich: It comes down to a really simple word: reciprocity. If I give you my business, I'm getting something in return. I'm OK with Apple understanding how I operate because it comes back to me. My life is easier. I feel empowered. Somebody gives me an Apple T-shirt and I'm wearing it because I'm proud to be a customer. What would make somebody feel that about a healthcare brand? I worked with a brand that makes a blood glucose monitor. Most of the people wearing it — even with short sleeves — wear it up here, hidden by their sleeve. And I asked: "What would make somebody go sleeveless? What makes somebody roll their sleeve up?" Because if they do, there's a chance someone sees it and asks about it. Or they're just proud to wear it. It helps them manage their life or their illness. That was a big question for the brand to wrestle with.

Chris: Why can't we answer that question easily?

Rich: Ask people. Involve them.

Chris: And why is that so difficult? There are so many roadblocks.

Rich: Is it ego? Is it the marketer knows best? You're not going to the person who actually matters. My experience as a patient is not your operational metrics. It's not what I clicked, visited, viewed, or downloaded. You've seen the beautiful journey maps that get put up on the wall with personas like "Fence Sitter." We just need to move them from “Fence Sitter” to “Green Grasser” and we're all good. No. Look at the lived journey that somebody is actually having, in and out of your ecosystem.

Chris: So we have people running these organizations who think they're customer-centric. What do you want that CMO, that VP-level person who has the ability to affect the experience, to know?

Rich: Market research is not going to tell you what somebody's living with. You see the quote about Amazon meetings — they always leave an empty chair in the conference room to represent the customer. Why is it empty? Bring people in. Not just: bring patients in and talk to them. Get a patient on your staff. The advocacy work is not dabbling, and it's not occasional. It's a full-contact sport. I see brands doing it as an exercise. The brilliant brands do it as an operating model — a customer operating model. In most companies, a significant decision gets broken by the HIPPO — the Highest Paid Person's Opinion. In the brands doing this well, customers break ties. They look at customer behaviors and solicited and unsolicited feedback. Customers are dropping signals on brands all the time. Before you survey them, look at the data you already have. What came out of Phase 3 on how people interacted with your product? The data is out there. We just have to mine for how the human felt.

Chris: Rich, thank you so much for joining us today and shedding your light on this. We really appreciate it.

Rich: Thank you for having me.

Chris: We'll see you next time on “The Point.”