When talking about the importance of personalization in healthcare, it’s easy to focus on the amazing advances in personalized medicine: using an individual’s own genetics for targeted therapies or even prevention strategies. That’s powerful.
But if that’s the only conversation around personalization in healthcare, it falls short. There are so many ways our healthcare system avoids personalization: we see people in terms of their disease rather than as the individuals they are. We view people as either health expert or not (with a medical degree or not), rather than as a person with experience and insights that might be relevant, whether or not they have a degree.
Whether we’re thinking of the patients being served or those who work in the field serving those patients, many in healthcare have rigid ideas about whose opinion matters in any given situation. That’s the opposite of personalization, and it’s a strategy that puts organizations at risk.
In May 2023, top healthcare leaders gathered virtually for a two-day summit to address the challenge of personalization in a field that admittedly needs a lot of standardization. Thirty-two thought-provoking speakers participated in keynotes and panel discussions covering topics such as patient centricity, consumerism in healthcare, data analysis, digital transformation, inclusive patient care systems, and population health management.
This article is the first of five that will share highlights from that summit.
I’ve written in the past about what RBC Capital Markets calls “the single biggest disruptive force” (“RBC Imagine: Preparing for Hyperdrive”): a shift in the balance of power away from traditional institutions into the hands of individuals.
In fact, that is such a central, urgent reality for healthcare that RBC analyst Nik Modi kicked off the summit. He made it clear why the healthcare industry needs insights from someone with an expertise in consumer products: “I study consumers, and patients are consumers. Providers must engage with the communities they serve in much more preventative ways. And the only way you can actually do that is by understanding the individual.”
Watch him in this short video here:
Patient Roundtable: Unveiling the Hidden Realities of Healthcare Personalization
If you want to understand the individuals you’re trying to lead or serve, as Modi advised, you have to hear directly from them. So, the first panel on day one was a discussion among three women who have survived cancer. They shared their personal experiences of feeling like the system doesn’t have ways to know them as individuals, and discussed how health systems and providers can be more inclusive in the way they treat patients. They also had great ideas about how healthcare providers can improve outcomes by expanding their view of who they should be “treating.”
Cindy Finch, LCSW, heart/lung cancer survivor, clinical therapist and author, said one way to extend inclusion is to elevate a patient’s caregiver (family member or friend) to the status of “co-patient.”
Kayla Redig is a patient advocate, and she said that “being a cancer survivor is the most suppressed I have felt within the healthcare system, and it’s almost like I have to be bald to matter in those hallways.”
Kawana Williams, MA, LPC, RMT, is a mental health counselor at Colorado State University. She feels the healthcare system’s continued emphasis on the “doctor knows best” paradigm gets in the way of personalization.
Watch this short video of their discussion about the challenges patients face when trying to navigate the healthcare system while maintaining their sense of individuality and human dignity.
Inclusion Panel: Redefining Healthcare for Individuality and Empowerment
The personal stories of people who have felt stifled by the system can be powerful. But if we don’t act on the insights gained from those stories, we just perpetuate the same impersonal approach that devalues individuality.
This is where inclusion comes in. Inclusion is not just one person deciding to be more open-minded about who matters. It’s that one person teaming up with more people to make their entire organization more open-minded about who matters – and making sure the organization is structured in a way that makes that level of inclusion routine.
In the first panel of day two, three healthcare leaders discussed inclusion and what individuality means in healthcare – and how to honor it.
Shaden Marzouk, MD MBA, is president of GenesisCare U.S. She mentioned the combination of all the factors that make humans unique – from our biology to our life experiences.
Lorna Rodriguez, MD., Ph.D, is professor in the Division of Gynecologic Oncology, and vice chair of faculty development in the Department of Surgery at City of Hope. She talked about learning how to listen differently, and the importance of listening to the right people – namely, the people who will be affected by any given decision.
DeAnna Minus-Vincent is managing director of The Outcomes Architect. She took it further and talked about the hard work required to not just get diverse voices at the table, but to create environments that will make them want to stay.
Watch this short video to hear excerpts from their lively panel discussion:
These two sessions introduced one of the major barriers facing leaders and organizations trying to operationalize personalization: we start off dehumanized, talking about patients as disease categories instead of individuals who are likely facing the most difficult challenges of their lives.
In the next article in this series, we’ll look at more of those barriers and how organizations struggle with transformation, how to see change as an opportunity and not a threat, and how to operationalize consumerism related to both clinical and non-clinical aspects of healthcare.
Register here to watch the entire sessions on demand. Download an executive summary of the summit, to gain access to a roadmap for operationalizing inclusion in healthcare.
Read the full article here
