Bringing the patient experience to life

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An Introduction to Customer Faithful: Our Work in Healthcare

Our work is about uncovering and interpreting the experiences and needs of patients and those around them.

Our guiding principle is to frame healthcare needs in the context of how they are perceived by individuals, rather than those delivering healthcare services.

It casts the patient in the role of ‘expert’, and seeks to learn directly from their views, stories and experiences, not just their symptoms.

By bringing the ‘lived experience’ of patients alongside more traditional healthcare information, our work can enable a far richer understanding of patients’ quality of life, as well as where and how it may be enhanced.

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How Does Our Work Benefit Healthcare Organisations?

Our insight work is truly patient-centred, placing as much meaning in things they feel are important in their lives as those defined by professionals involved in their healthcare.

This makes the approach ideally suited for enabling healthcare organisations to gain a more balanced and inclusive perspective of living with health conditions.

We can support healthcare organisations in many ways, including:

•  enabling organisations to identify the needs of patients at given stages of therapy, and the role and impact it plays in their lives

•  pinpointing where patients / families seek support when ‘living’ with a condition, and how new/existing services could provide help

•  demonstrating a patient-centred view of health to HCPs, patient advocacy groups, KOLs and beyond

•  contributing thought-leadership and insight into wider stakeholder debate, such as policy development or public awareness

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How Does Our Work Benefit Healthcare Organisations?

Examples of how patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) can apply Lifelines insights include:

• Identifying needs that can be met by developing integrated or multi-disciplinary care plans, incorporating health, social and preventative care. In addition to defining needs, Lifelines can also highlight to HCPs how patients understand existing service provision, and the degree of confidence they have in them.

• Pinpointing areas and issues where patients are seeking to manage their own care, including the information they need to do this

• Descriptions of ‘what good looks like” – patient-defined examples of how and when specific environments, services and support tools can support individuals across the patient pathway

• Detailing clues that enable (or prevent) early diagnosis to take place

• Building a catalogue of rehabilitation tricks, traps and tips that patients develop, as they come to terms with their condition

• Outlining life events that can signal a need for emotional, psychological or practical support, impacting a patient’s ability to cope with their health condition

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Our Insight is built in four stages

Literature Review • Assemble and organise core knowledge from existing insight

both within an organisation and beyond

Life Stories • Enhance depth of insight, through rich and detailed accounts

from patients and those around them

Analysis •  Integrate information, combining literature-review data with

patients’ feelings and perceptions

Insight •  Interpret findings into clear recommendations which are solidly

evidenced, and compelling to read

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Our Lifelines™ Methodology

•  Our technique develops insight from life 'episodes' rather than responding to predetermined topics

•  We try to define what’s valued as important, vs. how well it’s delivered

•  We use interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) – a detailed study of transcript data

•  We display our insight as a journey, defined by patient language, not clinicians

•  It is visual, illustrative – an aid to understanding rather than a quantitative assessment - there are no numbers on these graphics, but there are clues to the experience of how people manage living with a condition.

Our core method is qualitative, semi-structured interviews, with each in-depth discussion audio-recorded and analysed for high level themes /lower level evidence

Lifelines™ is a registered trademark of Customer Faithful ®2013

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A closer look at Lifelines™

The shape and definition of a Lifelines chart provides an ‘at-a-glance’ overview of patient experience

1 Lifelines journey steps are defined by patients in their own language

2 Lifeline data points detail the issues that matter to patients (captured from a range of sources)

3 The graph charts two ‘life lines’ – the importance of issues to patients vs. existing delivery success

4 Lifelines highlights areas of convergence and divergence, using ‘traffic-light’ coding and commentary

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What Makes Lifelines So Special?

Our Lifelines patient insight programmes have been used across a wide range of health conditions, from Rheumatoid Arthritis and Alzheimer’s Disease, to less common conditions such as Haemophilia and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension.

Lifelines offers easy-to-read visual illustration, robust analysis and a range of design attributes we call ‘Bring To Life’ features.

‘Bring To Life’ Features

1.  Life stories allow richer and more detailed insight into Lifelines graphics

2.  Source data integration enables other study materials to be combined for wider validation

3.  Drill-Down referencing, provides identification of source data, point-by-point

4.  ‘Zoom-in filters’ can highlight individual patient profiles or specific life-episodes

5.  Auditable data supporting peer review for academic publication

6.  Dual-format presentation via PowerPoint slides or hard-bound display books for use with customers and wider stakeholders

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Our Credentials – A Quality Commitment

Customer Faithful is led by Rick Harris, who has over 20+ years of research experience across a range of industry sectors.

Under his direction, the Lifelines research process has been developed and continually evolved during its use in healthcare and other industries. In addition to his own skills, Customer Faithful brings together a highly experienced team with wide commercial as well as research experience.

Lifelines is underpinned by a range of quality assurances:

•  all project teams are custom-built and overseen by Rick Harris, ensuring a consistent approach and expert guidance

•  Lifelines incorporates some of the latest thinking and techniques in healthcare qualitative research, including IPA study1

•  Lifelines has been designed for peer-review, and so offers a transparent audit trail, suitable for support of publication of findings

o  its consistent format makes quality review easy-to-manage and distinctive when sharing with wider stakeholders

Rick Harris

Managing Director, Customer Faithful

1 IPA - Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) – developed at Birkbeck University of London, 1996

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Supporting Thought Leadership

In recent years, there has been a growing acknowledgement in the UK - across the healthcare community - of the value of patient insight, and a commitment to seek ways to access it.

However, despite the widespread use of national surveys and complaints data, an investment in ‘smaller-scale, greater-depth’ qualititative research has been largely missed.

We firmly believe that our work is making a significant contribution in improving how to engage with and listen to patients, so that healthcare design is centred on the needs of those using them, rather than those delivering them.

Overall, our approach is innovative and focused on a quality of insight which seeks to break new ground in improving the lives of patients.

In so doing, we feel that such insight programmes are an ideal fit with the wider ambitions and values of the healthcare industry.

“Research from the Picker Institute, The Health Foundation and others

shows how far away we are from healthcare that really meets the

priorities and preferences of patients.

Patients and their families and friends, both individually and collectively, know

a great deal about health services from the most important end – service

delivery. We need to utilise this intelligence, these experiences, to

guide and inform and make it part of the power of change.”

Harry Cayton, 2006

Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence

“…The Outcomes Framework is only one part of our journey. If we want the NHS not to treat patients as though they are parts on a conveyor belt, we need to go further. We need to empower patients, their doctors and nurses to work together to get the best possible

care. We need patients to be fully engaged in the decision making process. Having a voice, loud and clear.

We are inviting people to use their creativity and ingenuity, and to surprise us with what they come up with…..allowing data to be used in this way will help improve the health and experience of patients”

Andrew Lansley, 2011 - Secretary of State for Health

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For further information about Customer Faithful, contact…….

Rick Harris, Managing Director Customer Faithful rick@customerfaithful.com www.customerfaithful.com