The Symbiotic Power of Two Research Solutions
Unlocking Deeper Understanding
Understanding the patient journey and human experience is paramount for healthcare marketing leaders. We know that mere statistics often fall short of painting a complete picture of the human experience. At LIFT Healthcare, we believe that true insight – the kind that fuels impactful strategy and drives business growth – emerges when quantitative data is harmoniously blended with deep qualitative understanding. When used in tandem, these two data types can inform and amplify each other, creating a feedback loop that unearths both challenges and opportunities with remarkable clarity. This symbiotic relationship ensures that strategies are not only data-driven but also profoundly human-centered. This is precisely where the intersection of Consumer Experience Research (CER) and MarketVoice studies offers unparalleled value.
While both CER and MarketVoice studies serve distinct purposes, their full power is unleashed when they work in tandem, providing a holistic and actionable understanding of consumers and providers. The benefit to using these studies also lies in how they can help hospital and health system marketing leaders build the case for leadership buy-in. Using CER and MarketVoice in tandem to address the same research area can act as two-factor authentication for a specific problem’s existence and urgency. This can validate marketing leaders’ efforts and demonstrate to leadership that their motivations are backed by tangible, reliable data.
Consumer Experience Research (CER) is designed to objectively evaluate patient interactions and assess the immediate drivers of patient experience. It focuses on understanding the practical aspects of the patient journey, such as cost transparency, appointment wait times, and the efficiency of new patient onboarding processes. CER utilizes a protocol where callers act as prospective patients or their representatives to inquire about services, costs, time to appointments, and care plan establishment. Data collection involves both objective and subjective measures. Objective data includes analysis of Google listings and review ratings, website content (e.g., pricing, calls to action, new patient resources, value propositions, patient navigators, testimonials, provider bios), and administrative details like phone tree navigation, transfer success, hold times, and representative introductions. It also captures information about patient onboarding, online scheduling availability, time to appointment, cost of first visits, and promotion of digital tools or patient navigators. Subjective data is gathered through caller ratings on a 5-point scale assessing representative knowledge, helpfulness, availability clarity, pricing transparency, and comfortability. This comprehensive approach helps identify specific pain points experienced by consumers in real-world interactions.
MarketVoice studies delve deeper to provide valuable insights into consumer perceptions, feelings, understanding, and beliefs. The opportunity of these studies is to illuminate the lived experiences of patients, identify common unmet needs, and address opportunities for support. MarketVoice aims to discern the dynamic experiences that encompass the entire patient experience as it relates to healthcare, including their journey to seeking care, their perceptions of resources in their area, and their most memorable experiences, to name a few. MarketVoice studies often also include gathering perceptions of internal stakeholders like administrative leadership and clinical providers. Internal stakeholder MarketVoices can help decision makers understand their staff’s needs and experiences, such as, but not limited to, their thoughts on internal culture, potential pain points in care-delivery, and their opinions on their brand’s relationship with the community. MarketVoice, at its core, is a way to translate participant sentiment into actionable insights that decision-makers can apply to their problem-solving. MarketVoice studies are highly bespoke and customizable to suit the intended study population and research objectives, which makes the study design applicable to a myriad of issues in healthcare.
MarketVoice studies consistently employ a mixed-methods approach, which we consider to be essential because solely quantitative data is often insufficient for a well-rounded picture. This mixed-methodology involves the systematic integration of quantitative surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews. We typically distribute targeted quantitative surveys digitally to gather comprehensive population information and general stakeholder sentiment. We collect qualitative data through extensive, in-depth ethnographic interviews with stakeholders. These interviews are recorded and meticulously analyzed by our researchers who capture the nuanced understanding and emotional truths that quantitative data alone cannot provide. This integration allows for a more complete and synergistic utilization of data, fueling better strategies for engaging, empowering, and educating patients, and advancing the healthcare organization’s business strategy.
Targeted Investigation: When CER Illuminates MarketVoice’s Path
When we conduct a Consumer Experience Research (CER) study first, it can serve as an initial diagnostic tool, pinpointing specific, high-level pain points that warrant deeper investigation. This initial CER often involves researchers performing calls to client and competitor locations and our analyses of publicly available data like online reviews and social media mentions. This data can then be used as a first-person account of what the typical patient may experience during a front-door interaction.
In a recent engagement focused on behavioral health, a CER report identified that representatives were frequently unclear on facility protocols, treatment programs, and financial assistance options. Further research into online reviews and social media revealed widespread patient frustration regarding a “lack of structure or oversight” and even warnings against scheduling appointments at certain facilities. This upfront intelligence proved invaluable. By identifying these pain points through CER, the subsequent MarketVoice study could then deploy highly targeted qualitative interview guides and quantitative surveys. Using the CER-informed qualitative and quantitative methodologies, researchers were able to delve directly into the contextual factors surrounding these issues, gathering specific patient and provider feedback on how their experience could be improved. The value here is clear: CER maximized the efficiency and relevance of the MarketVoice study, ensuring participant interactions directly addressed the most pressing challenges.
Validation and Differentiation: How MarketVoice Empowers CER’s Findings
Starting with a MarketVoice study helps uncover internal perceptions and deep-rooted experiences from both patients and providers. CER can then translate these insights into actionable strategies for the external market. In the case studies provided, using MarketVoice first, followed by CER, revealed critical operational challenges as well as unique competitive advantages.
A recent oncology service-line MarketVoice project uncovered significant provider complaints about billing issues due to the company that managed their revenue cycle system. Providers described the revenue cycle management company as “incompetent” and “nightmarish” to deal with. When we conducted a subsequent CER study, it provided external validation of this internal frustration: the client’s public Google reviews were full of user complaints labeling the billing problems as a fault within the health system. Reviews referred to our client as “greedy” due to incorrect bills and “selfish” due to the lack of communication and time it would take consumers to solve a billing issue. Consumers didn’t know that the responsible party for most of these issues was not our client’s employees, but rather a company hired by our client to handle the revenue cycle. Consumers were interpreting the flawed partnership between our client and their revenue-cycle manager as blatant negligence on our client’s part, and general consumer sentiment towards our client was negatively impacted due to these issues. This intersection highlighted a direct link between an internal operational pain point and its negative impact on external reputation, providing compelling evidence for strategic intervention. This finding inspired leadership to reevaluate their relationship with the revenue-cycle management company and look for potential avenues of support their team could provide in order to improve the billing experience for patients.
On a more positive note, the same oncology MarketVoice and CER studies revealed a powerful differentiator for our client from their competitors. During the oncology MarketVoice, researchers found that patient navigators had the largest positive impact on patients’ experiences. MarketVoice patient participants recalled navigators’ names, demeanor, devotion to care, and found them to make treatment more manageable and less stressful. During the subsequent CER website review, LIFT researchers discovered that our client was one of the only providers in their market that mentioned patient navigators as a resource online. Recalling the importance of navigators in the MarketVoice, this CER finding had a profound impact on our client. MarketVoice illuminated a highly valued, human-centered strength, while CER confirmed its rarity in the competitive landscape. This allowed for a strategic recommendation to invest in celebrating the value of patient navigators through patient testimonials, navigator bios, and providing a prominent place for this information on our client’s website. This recommendation empowered our client to leverage an internal strength into a key external marketing opportunity to rise above competitors.
Integrating Consumer and MarketVoice Studies
The combined application of Consumer Experience Research and MarketVoice studies offers marketing leaders a well-developed vantage point from which to view the complex patient experience. By weaving together quantitative performance data with profound qualitative human insights, these integrated projects provide a clearer, more actionable path forward. This path can, in turn, improve patient care, support staff, and strategically position the health system for sustainable growth. At LIFT Healthcare, we believe this human-inspired approach to marketing is not just valuable; it’s essential for successfully engaging healthcare consumers who have grown to expect highly personalized and responsive experiences.
Want to discuss the pain points you need to understand more deeply to succeed at meeting your growth goals? Let’s chat.
Kinsley Kilgore, MAPA, Healthcare Anthropologist
With a background in Anthropology and Archaeology, I am driven to understand why people do what they do, and the context that surrounds those actions. In my free time, I enjoy contributing to archaeological research and camping on the weekends with my husband and our dog, Darby.