Does patient experience need a brand makeover?

History tells me that some of the greatest battles ever fought have been in conference rooms over mission statements and brand name makeovers. I’ve literally seen an hour of debate determining whether there should be a comma or semicolon in a never-to-be-read corporate value statement.  

 As one who has been intimately involved in PX both as a long-term inpatient and as a healthcare writer, researcher, professor, and board member, I’m seeing how some in our industry feel that patient experience is getting stale.  

While both words explain exactly what it means, for some reason, there seems to be a need to differentiate by now calling it a “human experience” and by rebranding the acronym to “HX.”  

Having spent most of my adult life in global branding I completely understand the anxiety marketers have for feeling like a “me too” product or service. You can probably list dozens of products where you would say, “They rebranded it but it’s still a (fill in the blank).” How many of us call it “X” instead of Twitter? Not many. How many of us still call music or sports venues by their original names despite sponsors buying the naming rights? Lots!  

Branding patient experience is no different. Stakeholders of every kind know exactly what it means. I totally understand why vendors and providers might want to make patient experience a subset of human experience, but the former will never go away.   

There are cases in healthcare where I see much more specificity needed to explain a service. Population health is one that comes up in my focus groups all the time. In almost every case the IT leaders on my panels will say “What flavor of population health are you talking about?” or “Can you give me your definition of pop health so I know what you think it is.” They place it on the top of useless buzzwords vendors put in their literature.  

I don’t see this as the case with PX.  

Now do I see warts with the way it’s branded or implemented? Most definitely. As I‘ve written on many occasions healthcare themes need to have at least two hyphens. In the case of PX changing the first word to “Human” is sort of silly as it makes the term even LESS specific.  

Where PX needs to be improved as a brand needs to come AFTER the PX acronym.  

For example, PX-Human Factors, PX-AI Factors, PX-Cybersecurity, etc.   

Many of the providers and vendors who have tried to migrate to a more encompassing brand for PX have found that reverting to patient experience is unenforceable in the real world. Sales teams complain that re-branding to Human Experience smacks of something like the HR department embedding touchy-feely into their product sets when it’s there already without changing the name.  

So as you sit in a department meeting where making patient experience more human consumes the majority of the conversation, I offer this advice. Go ‘outside-in” and ask your customers first. If patients say they would rather have your relationship with them defined as “the human experience” go ahead and change the department name. If you’re doing it strictly “inside-out” because a committee feels it trendier, do so at your own branding peril.  

PX is not as tired as you think it is to the people who represent the “P.”