C2B: A New Conversation


Healthcare Breakfast Recap_SaffronSteerWOLO_Jan242017

We recently ran a roundtable discussion over breakfast, in partnership with Wolff Olins (London) which had a working title of ‘How do we make people’s needs and preferences an outcome rather than a value statement‘. Our session was based on evidence that there is very little unity in the healthcare system, no one is talking to each other, and far too often it is the patients who suffer because of this; yet most providers claim to have the patient ‘at the heart of what they do’! If we look at this problem from the person’s perspective, understand their needs, and design a journey to ensure better outcomes, we believe there is a better chance that silos could disappear and practical solutions ensue.

Our session was unique in that it:

  • It brought together people from across the NHS, private and voluntary sectors  – we weren’t concerned with who provides the services and this allowed us all to focus on the person who was experiencing the services
  • It was not another talking shop – we had practical take aways from just 2 intense hours together. These are described in the presentation (link above). We plan to arrange further such sessions to develop the narrative, behaviours and responses that healthcare providers could adopt to better meet people’s needs and preferences.

How did the session run?

We kicked off the session with 4 great speakers with different perspectives on our topic: James Parker, CEO, CS Healthcare; Johanna Moss, Director of Strategy and Business Development at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital; Farhan Rabbhani, Medical Director at SELDOC and David Gilbert, Patient Director at the Sussex MSK Partnership. We then led our participants through a brief interactive exercise, presenting them with a simple scenario of ‘Jamie’ who thinks he has fractured his arm and how he experiences this. We applied some service design thinking as we worked through this scenario.  

The outcomes?

There were many ‘lean forward’ moments during the session; all are described in the full RECAP which you can read by following the link above. We’ve since adopted the expression “C2B”, as apposed to B2C, as a way of orientating our, and others’, thinking. This is helping us lead a new conversation that is more about how the customer (person) interacts with the organisation rather than how the organisation might view its customers.

Thank you for reading this post. I’d be interested in any comments or discussion that it might have inspired. This has been ‘Away from the Heard’: The Saffron Steer blog.