In the evolving landscape of health care, your consumers, patients, and workforce are undergoing significant demographic changes. At the heart of these changes are generational differences in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. These generational influences don’t override each unique individual; however, they can and do shape a myriad of preferences, values, and expectations. These shifts impact every aspect of your lives in these modern times, including how health care is delivered and consumed.
Delivering quality care now and in the future ,requires a focus not only on the clinical quality of care, but also on the quality of the experiences you deliver on both sides of the stethoscope. The complexities of these modern times require you to be intentional in understanding the challenges or ease of current experiences and in designing new experiences of care. They call you to keep individual needs at the forefront of the care experience for both patients and your workforce while also minding the gaps in care generated by macro-level differences in generational expectations.
Health care organizations currently serve six generations of patients and employ predominantly four generations—yet it isn’t always clear if and how you are designing patient and workforce experiences with generation-based expectations in mind. Granted, not everyone identifies with a prescribed generational cohort, and some feel this attaches unnecessary and less-than-true labels to large groups of people, thus diluting individual expression. However, looking at behaviors and preferences when you cohort by age (and thus, by generation), you see some clear evolution in both consumers and your workforce.
Surveys reveal that older, more experienced patients place a high value on providers being fully focused on them during a health care experience. They are perhaps more likely to notice (and not appreciate) multi-tasking. Younger patients, on the other hand, report placing a higher importance on presence and having a personal relationship with a provider. Kindness, honesty, humor, and shared interests or life experiences are also especially notable to this cohort. It is important to note that regardless of age, all patients place primacy on being involved in their care.
All of this is to say that providers who are intentional about being focused, present, and open to understanding what their patients have to say about their health, are more likely to create a mutually positive experience.
Another difference we can see when we look broadly across feedback surveys for both patients and employees is a notable decline in response rates from generation to generation. The highest response rates come from our two oldest generations (Silent Generation/Boomers) at 36 percent. Each generation thereafter drops 10–15 percent, and our youngest patients (Gen Z) have a response rate of less than 10 percent. We see this same pattern when looking at employee/physician engagement survey response rates. It is clear that as culture has shifted from traditional (analog) to digital forms of communication, so has our willingness to provide feedback via traditional channels.
We live in a world of fast-paced change, and we can all agree that culture changes over time. In our communities today, we have people who grew up and learned to access, consume, and deliver health care in traditional (analog) ways. We also have people who have never lived in an analog world but rather are digital natives, growing up utilizing technology to navigate the world (including health care). And we have those whose childhoods were analog but who experienced the digital age during young adulthood when they were becoming professionals and consumers; these people have generally had to be the most adaptive to changes in technology. It’s not a surprise, then, that among these different groups, we have diverse preferences, values, expectations, and behaviors driven by broad culture shifts—largely those in technology—and impacting us all.
Next-generation Human Understanding takes cognizance of these differences and addresses the challenges that arise from them within a simple framework.
1. Act now—equip and empower teams to deliver the best experiences today.
- Understand the journeys of both patients and your workforce and seek to improve or completely re-design the journey in a human-centered way, as opposed to fixing one problem or point in a silo.
- Develop steadfast curiosity. One of the core tenets of curiosity is listening to understand. When you listen to understand the needs of patients and the workforce, it is vital that you approach communication as a skill. Patients have varying preferences for communication styles, ranging from traditional in-person conversations to messaging on their mobile phones. The same is true of your workforce. In this digital age, where nearly instantaneous responses are expected, it is important to ensure you make room for both traditional and digital listening/communication and ensure easy-to-access, actionable feedback, as close to the experience as possible.
2. Plan for the near term—co-design experiences with key stakeholders, to be implemented in the next year or two.
- Make it easy to capture ideas from patients, providers, and the larger workforce. The best ideas come from those who experience what it’s like to consume or deliver care, not from those who spend the majority of their time in a boardroom. Develop listening programs that allow those on both sides of the stethoscope to contribute through modern, sophisticated listening and co-design methods utilizing modes that are personalized to each individual’s preference. Bring this deep listening into the boardroom and include insights and ideas in organizational decision-making.
3. Prepare for what’s next—develop innovative, system-level strategies to anticipate and meet the needs of future healthcare workers and consumers.
- Keep a steady eye on your community and the shifting expectations of consumers, patients, and your workforce. This enables you to be proactive and agile in terms of both short- and long-term planning.
- Utilize macro-level data to surface current trends and stay ahead of what’s coming to help guide both strategies and tactics.
As you navigate these transformative times in healthcare, the key to success lies in your ability to understand and adapt to the diverse needs of patients and the workforce across generations. By embracing innovative strategies and fostering a culture of listening and co-design, you can create a healthcare experience that truly resonates with everyone involved.
