Kevin and I recently attended the first ever Gel Health conference. Gel, which stands for “good experience live,” is hosted by Mark Hurst, who managed to bring together an eclectic group of speakers and participants with a common interest in improving the patient experience in health care environments.

Kevin and I recently attended the first ever Gel Health conference. Gel, which stands for “good experience live,” is hosted by Mark Hurst, who managed to bring together an eclectic group of speakers and participants with a common interest in improving the patient experience in health care environments.

Mark’s summary of the event: “I was struck by the number of real-world solutions we learned about. Improving the patient experience isn’t something we need to wait for—it’s happening RIGHT NOW, and has been for years, and we can learn from what’s working.”

There is no shortage of incredible, moving, compassionate, and motivated individuals who have done amazing things to make the patient experience not just more tolerable, but intimate, humane, unique, rewarding, and healing—in every sense of the word. People were moved to tears several times during the two-day event. I have to admit that these stories touched me emotionally as well. By the end of the session, however, I was more confused than I was motivated.

How is it possible that something as obviously valuable as a rewarding patient experience does not exist at a systemic level? There’s been a lot of recent public debate about whether government or the free market system should shape the future of health care in the U.S., but however that shakes out, it seems painfully obvious that the demand for a better patient experience already exists—so why isn’t there a supply?

Experience-level thinking is not easy. Experience design involves many different touchpoints. Experience design involves multiple people and or departments. Experience design involves several audiences, each with their own needs. Because of this complexity, it seems that within health care, we choose the easier path. We rely on great individuals to compensate for the lack of a system. We rely on a few great touchpoints to compensate for the lack of a holistic experience.

I choose to maintain my belief that humankind is inherently good. My hypothesis is not that we don’t want to provide positive patient experiences, or that the economics do not allow for it. Instead, we have not yet invested the time and energy required to make the jump from people/events/random organizations to designed, repeatable systems.

As an economy, we have demonstrated that we know how to do this. Examples of beautifully designed holistic experiences are discussed every day at an increasing rate. The patient experience-related stories I heard at Gel were inspirational, and they have a key role in increasing awareness and providing a sense of urgency. However, these examples are not sufficient. Our society is in the process of quickly evolving beyond an economy of products and services. We exist in an experience economy.

In the next several years, it is quite predictable that delivering great experiences will cease to be a point of differentiation and instead will become an ante for just being in business. For now, most of the population is willing to accept poor experiences in health care as long as they meet our immediate needs for treatment. Reform or no reform, I don’t think this condition will be allowed to last much longer.