Putting Patients At The Heart Of Healthcare

With the region’s healthcare industry seeing major developments in technology, changing patient needs, and an increasingly competitive marketplace, we examine how customer-centricity has a taken on greater importance than ever before.

- Neil King

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. It’s a slogan that has stuck firm as a bedrock of service industries since being popularised by high-end retailers such as Selfridges, Wanamaker’s, and Marshall Field’s around the turn of the 20th century.

At least, most service industries. A notable exception is healthcare, where the customer – the patient – has traditionally been expected to accept the decisions, diagnoses and dictums of the industry professionals. And often for good reason, given both the complexity and importance of giving the best, most accurate advice and treatment.

But while there is a large degree of logic to this structure, it is not without its criticisms. Doctor-centric models – or worse, business-centric models – have attracted concerns that organisations are set-up in a way that focuses on profits and targets rather than customer experience. A system that can sideline or disregard the patient at best, or allow practitioners to intimidate or coerce the patient at worst.

In recent years, however, the spotlight has been shined more intensely on the role of the customer in the healthcare cycle, largely as a result of disruption in other industries.

From transportation to tourism, the likes of Careem and Airbnb have proved there can be a different paradigm – that customers have more power and more options now than they ever have in the past.

Driven by technological developments and the example of other industries, today’s patients are better informed, have greater expectations, can shop around, and can make or break an organisation’s reputation with online reviews.