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If you ask a random sampling of health system leaders why their infusion volume is slipping away, the first – and most frequent – answers usually sound familiar: Payer steerage. Prior authorization hurdles. Reimbursement pressure. Competing sites of care. All of those matter, yet none are deserving of the marquee headline, if you ask Prateek Bhatia, VP|GM, Intrafusion at McKesson. “There are external forces, to be sure, but you’ve also got to look internally. What are you doing to cater to the modern patient’s expectations and preferences?” he asks.

When you follow the patient – not just the claim – the theory Bhatia tees up becomes clearer. The most powerful force pulling infusion patients away from hospitals is the same one, he suggests, that’s largely reshaped arguably every consumer-facing industry over the last decade. It’s the consumer experience. In this case – that translates to the patient experience – with a growing number of patients treating their healthcare options much like any consumer would consider their options for everyday goods and services.

Despite its unequivocal relevance for today’s patients, Bhatia goes on to urge health systems not to treat “experience “as a buzzword – but, instead, as the sum of hundreds or even thousands of practical details that determine whether a vulnerable, potentially critically ill person will drive to your campus, park in your garage, navigate your corridors, wait in your lobby, trust your staff, understand their bill – and then, when all is said and done, choose to come back.

Walking in the patient’s shoes

For health systems, infusion leakage may show up in the form of declining hospital-based infusions and rising “external” administration of therapies prescribed – resulting in revenue outflow, the loss of visibility into treatment adherence, and fragmented care. From the patient’s perspective, however, it feels very different. A patient who has already rearranged work, childcare, and transportation for every infusion appointment – which can be monthly or even weekly – is not making an abstract or arbitrary site-of-care decision. What it often comes down to is something as stripped-down as deciding whether they can spare another $10 in parking, another hour in a crowded waiting room, another round of paperwork that seems to start from zero every time, or – in the simplest of terms – another for-the-most-part-unpleasant experience.

Meanwhile, across the country, privately-owned ambulatory infusion centers and other community options have responded by building an experience that looks – and feels – modern. There’s typically free, convenient parking on site. Centers have smaller, more manageable footprints that are closer to home for patients. Wait times are shorter. Digital tools are available to make appointments, reminders, and check-in as intuitive as using an everyday e-commerce platform. And patients enjoy comfortable spaces – complete with TV screens, warm blankets, and complimentary snacks – that make it feel less like a hospital and more like a lounge of sorts.

It is not that hospitals are unable to match these offerings. It is that some have been slow to see – or, understandably, too stretched to respond to – how profoundly their patients’ expectations have shifted. Again, patients are no longer receiving their infusions in hospitals and health systems by default. They are, in a real (and empowered) sense, shoppers – with more choices than ever.

Patient over process

Going back to those common themes in infusion strategy discussions – capacity, compliance, and reimbursement – Bhatia cautions that it can be easy to lose sight of what matters more, or even most. “If health systems focus exclusively on the operational side of infusion, they risk investing in processes that the patient will never see, because there is a lack of investment in the experience itself that determines whether the patient will actually stay.”

That oversight can have measurable consequences for health systems. Revenue migrates elsewhere. Data visibility goes dark. And clinicians no longer have the confidence that their patients are even being infused at all. Patients, of course, lose access to a familiar care team and their prescribing provider, which is a widely accepted contributor to poorer outcomes overall.

“Health systems put the patient at the center of everything they do, and now the patient experience – more than the process – has to lead the way,” Bhatia says with clarity. He adds, “Payers can steer, but patients ultimately decide. When patients feel seen, understood, and cared for by their health system, in a way that’s on par with the other services they choose outside of healthcare, they are much more likely – from what I’ve seen – to choose that experience regardless of coverage pressures.”

Partnership leads the way

Even the most forward-thinking and well-intentioned health systems – those who recognize the importance of patient experience in the capture and recapture equations – may find themselves in need of support, resources, and expertise that go beyond what’s readily available in house. For these organizations, partnering with McKesson’s Infusion for Health Systems provides access to a team that has the expertise, infrastructure, analytics, and relationships to make a difference. By bringing together both scale efforts and acute customization, our health system infusion experts help you:

• Identify and address leakage patterns through data insights that reveal where the patient is going – and why
• Accelerate site-of-care expansion by designing hospital-affiliated community infusion centers with proven operational frameworks
• Streamline workflows across scheduling, reimbursement, and clinical documentation to reduce administrative burden
• Enhance patient experience through a modernized approach and setting that match today’s consumer expectations

As Bhatia puts it, “Modernizing the experience is what’s going to keep infusion patients choosing their health system over and over, and we are here to help our customers do that as quickly, efficiently, and completely as possible.”

Give your health system the resources to start achieving more today by contacting Infusion for Health Systems by McKesson.