Heather Wilson, Senior Vice President and Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at AccentCare, sits at the intersection of customer experience, employee experience, marketing and talent recruitment.
Why the multiple roles? For Wilson and AccentCare they all blend together. AccentCare is one of the largest post-acute healthcare providers in the US covering the range of personal care to clinical services like nursing and physical therapy as well as hospice care.
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The company's ability to tell a good human story and drive experiences also attracts talent amid a healthcare worker shortage. I caught up with Wilson at Constellation Research's Ambient Experience Summit. Here are some of the takeaways from our chat and the questions that followed.
Why customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) is critical to healthcare. "My role has both the CX and EX experience because, while our end client is physicians and healthcare systems, we also have to ensure a good experience for patients and families—they are a secondary referral source," she said.
The need for narratives. Wilson was brought on at AccentCare to tell the stories of clinicians and patients. She continually emphasizes storytelling in internal meetings, marketing and executive communications. "Storytelling is in my DNA. We have amazing stories in the everyday work that our clinicians do, but they weren’t being told," said Wilson. "Everything we do starts with a patient story. When executives speak, when they visit branches—we make sure they have real patient stories because it reminds us why we do this."
Transformation. Wilson said transformation in healthcare is often slow due to technology, legacy systems and older processes. Wilson modernized AccentCare's digital marketing strategy, but noted that "we live in an industry where paper brochures are a thing."
AI and analytics. Wilson said AI and analytics is being used at AccentCare for sales enablement, marketing targeting, and talent acquisition and recruitment. "We have to blend the traditional with the digital," said Wilson.
Digital transformation challenges. Wilson said barriers to healthcare digital transformation is hampered by the lack of interoperability between Electronic health records, regulations on patient data and aging patient demographics that keep non-digital engagement methods going. Full digital transformation is likely 10 years away at least, said Wilson. "Healthcare is still running on 1990s systems, and they’ve gotten away with it for a long time. But with AI, the pressure is on to finally modernize," she said.
The intersection of CX and EX. Wilson said word of mouth is critical to recruiting and patient care quality. "If you’re a clinician, you want to work at a place known for top-quality care. If you’re a doctor, you want to refer patients to a company you trust," said Wilson. "If we don’t have enough nurses, we can’t grow. It’s that simple."
