In April, MobiHealthNews and our sister publications focused our theme month coverage on the consumerization of healthcare. As patients take on more and more financial responsibility for their own care, the industry is responding by turning healthcare into a consumer experience. For May, we're continuing on with the same narrative thread: As hospitals look to earn the loyalty of consumer-patients, patient experience must become a focus.

Patient experience is coming into vogue over the term "patient engagement" because it makes patients a subject and not an object. Conversations about patient engagement are about getting a patient to do something, to engage, but patient experience is all about what a provider organization can do for its patients.

The patient experience conversation isn't strictly a technology discussion, although technology can influence patient experience in both directions. It encompasses space and facility design, cost of care, staff training and more. But patient experience can serve as a North Star for technology companies as well as for hospitals, and at MobiHealthNews we'll focus on the potential digital health technology has in patient experience.

As we dig into patient experience in the month of May, we'll talk to experts about best practices and pitfalls to avoid. We'll look at the role technology has to play in shaping the patient experience. And we'll look at hospitals that have had success with patient experience, culminating in our coverage later this month of the Cleveland Clinic's 10th Annual Patient Experience: Empathy & Innovation Summit, copresented by MobiHealthNews parent company HIMSS. We'll have staff on hand at that event with both video and text reports. 

The Cleveland Clinic has been on the leading edge of this space. At HIMSS19, Cleveland Clinic Chief Experience Officer Adrienne Boissy dove into the topic, urging hospitals to keep empathy at the forefront as they redesign and innovate care.

"Over and over and over again, the drivers of exceptional experiences are the moments with the doctors and the nurses. There’s still something sacred about that moment,” Boissy said at the time. “So how we’re training, how we’re teeing up, how we’re using technology to extend and support that relationship is how we should be placing our bets.”

We'll be focusing on patient experience throughout the month of May, so keep the link handy to our collections page.