PATIENT EXPERIENCE
The Call to be Urgently Empathetic: The Transformation to Human-Centered Care
By Holly Sullivan
The reality is that everyone eventually becomes a patient. Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and endured a complex 12-hour surgery. While recovering in the ICU at one of the best academic medical centers in the country, the nurse encouraged me to use the restroom, which was out in the open so patients could be monitored carefully. A few minutes later, I found myself surrounded by six male doctors and residents who were rounding. They came into the room without regard to my privacy and started discussing my case. I sat there feeling humiliated and angry that there was no respect for my basic human dignities. Unfortunately, these experiences are a daily norm in health care.
There are several proposed solutions to key issues in our field today — population health, accountable care, and so forth. But do those concepts really address the underlying experiential issues outlined in my own personal story? If you peel the onion back, what is at the core that has been lost? It can be argued that it is the human element that has, perhaps, been forgotten.
So, why is this shift important and why is it critical to think about it now? The transformation to a human-centered approach is an imperative that is simply vital to our existence going forward. It will help us get from health care organizations that simply care for sick people to health organizations that care for humans’ needs and preferences, across their entire life journey. It is important to define and build a story around what it means to be a “health” organization so that our people have a unified understanding of how it affects them and most importantly, they see themselves in this new story as critical to this transition.
If this is the case, how do we put the human back at the center of what we do as a health system? We are trained to provide safe, reliable and affordable care, but do we take the time to focus on the individual and their needs and preferences? This requires a deliberate, human-centered approach focused on who we are serving and how they expect to be cared for as humans. The transformation to a human-centered approach is an imperative that is vital to our existence going forward. It will help us evolve from simply caring for sick people to health organizations that treat humans’ needs and preferences, across their entire life journey.
We also need to develop a sense of urgency around this as our field moves with increasing speed toward a tipping point. This is the convergence of science, technology and consumerism where new competitors, spurred on by large private equity investments, are fast forming offerings around these new market dynamics. We must embrace this new model of care delivery, or we will be disrupted in the future. But it is also the right thing to do for our patients and our community.
Urgent Empathy as Driver to Human-Centered Care
As part of this new focus on the human, we need to ask some important questions about how we provide care. Do our services truly reflect a human-centered approach? The answer to that can be found in an intensive study of a single but very important word: empathy.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. If we can develop an empathetic understanding of the people we serve, we will then have the proper lens through which we can provide human-centered care. Given the speed at which change is happening, “urgent empathy” is a critical element of any human-centered approach, and the time to develop it is now. For hospitals that do not embrace this shift and act urgently in their markets, disrupters will find ways to capture the most profitable segments of their business.
As we look to develop urgent empathy around our care delivery, there are four important questions that need to be asked to help guide us toward a more human-centered, personalized approach.
1. Is our care highly usable across the population? Highly usable means that care is readily available and accessible to those across our communities. Access to health care impacts one’s overall physical, social and mental health status and quality of life. In addition to accessible, we need care to be available, meaning that not only do we need to provide physical locations and access points where our consumers live, work and play, but we also need to be available to them to interact with us as they need it, when they need it — physically or virtually.
2. Is our care intuitive? Intuitive means that our services make sense to people and are based on what people believe to be true and real. Consumers should understand where (primary care, ED, urgent, specialist) and when they should seek care, and be able to easily understand and follow their care plans. However, this is not the case today. We have developed numerous barriers in our processes and in our communications that are far from intuitive. Research shows that fewer than half of patients understand their doctors’ directions or the next step in their care journey. This disconnect is largely a function of when and how we share critical information with a person who is likely at their most anxious and vulnerable. We are further challenged by our inherently complicated processes and terminology that are an integral part of how we care for people today, creating an even greater disconnect between providers and patients.
3. Does our care promote human dignity? While under our care, patients experience one of the most vulnerable and stressful times of their lives. It is critical that we are not just concerned with providing the right care, but with how people are treated when they need our services. Our care needs to uphold and actively promote human dignity, which is defined as the state of being worthy of honor and respect. Dignity is also frequently associated with autonomy and controlling one’s destiny. Here, the notion of dignity is extended to include not only respect for the individual, but also their right to make choices. It is vital that a person is involved in their own care decision-making, or at least have an advocate that can speak on their behalf.
4. Does our care model reduce anxiety and stress or cause it? People are already overly anxious when they seek our services; thus, we need to avoid adding to their stress. This broadly covers their experience from finding the right location, to getting the care they need, to completion of treatment and even payment for those services. Deliberate thought into the causes of anxiety, and how they might intersect with the patient’s entire journey through our system, is critical. A care model that is empathetic greatly reduces anxiety and stress; providers and patients form a relationship where caregivers take the time to understand consumer concerns, and the care processes and communications are built to support that connection.
A Call to Action
In order to ensure sustainability, we need take a step back to better view the problem and reorient our focus toward human-centered care. That requires using empathy as our North Star to deliver the products and services that will sustain us as the provider of choice, and ensure optimal health for our communities in the future. We must act urgently to coalesce around the goals of human-centered care and develop a solid plan for transformation.
Leaders across the organization need to understand and embrace “urgent empathy,” and remain engaged to help identify organizational gaps in the journey to human-centered care. As a starting point, these leaders could develop a plan to address the three most significant gaps. Employing our people in this mission is imperative. The power of this story will move others to adopt it as their own and help push it forward in unique and powerful ways.
If we do not take this seriously, the implications may not be felt immediately but will gradually take their toll on us as we slowly lose to others who have created disruptive models that displace us from entire segments of our business.
However, if we do take action and embrace urgent empathy as a guide to human-centered care, it can help us bridge to a better future. It will help us address all the elements of the Triple Aim, leading to happier, healthier people in our communities while simultaneously creating a sustainable advantage for our organization in the future.
Holly Sullivan is the senior director of strategic marketing at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the 2020 board president of the Society for Health Care Strategy and Market Development.
