Searching for Products in Healthcare Providers

If you’re a healthcare provider, what is your product?

This question surfaces when these organizations try to adopt a Product Operating Model or move from project management to a product-oriented organization. And yes, there’s quite an overlap between these two.

I like to consider this from the perspective of the customer—in this case, the patient. The product is an experience—a fast, convenient, high-quality treatment with minimal friction—not just the treatment itself but the whole experience around it.

This definition unlocks the potential to create empowered cross-functional product teams accountable to patient experience.

In a small provider, this might be one team involving people from different areas of the organization.

In a larger provider, this might involve multiple teams, each structured and empowered to own a patient experience (e.g., the telemedicine experience, the clinic visit experience). Some teams will be long-standing, owning and improving a product experience over time. Some teams will be formed to create new patient experiences or to drive dramatic change across experiences.

Once you organize empowered teams, the next question to tackle is how they could collaborate in a way that lets them iterate through fast feedback. What does an increment of the patient experience that can be inspected and used for adaptation look like? An example I’ve seen work is a tweak of the SOP, supported by a tweak of the involved IT system, tried in at least one clinic.

The energy I see when these empowered cross-functional teams get together is real. People who were previously stuck navigating bureaucratic, siloed processes can finally work directly on improving the patient experience.

The magic is followed by success. At one client who followed this approach, we saw breakthroughs in business consolidation initiatives, digital enablement, and rolling out telemedicine at breakneck speed - without missing a beat.

So spend some time identifying the right product topology for your organization. This is key to creating an environment where leaders can empower people to figure out how to move the needle on a customer experience.

Then, help these product-oriented teams slice their work in a way that enables them to iterate.

The example above talks about healthcare providers. What’s the product architecture in your world?