Podcast Q&A with Jeff Johnson, Part 2: “We’re Constantly Tapped into What Customers Value.”

When Jeff Johnson, VP of Innovation & Digital Business at Banner Health, says 2022 is going to be “a busy year,” he’s not kidding. Although driving digital transformation has already been a key area of focus for the 30-hospital system, it’s been elevated even higher to help meet the evolving needs of both patients and providers.

It’s such a big priority, in fact, that it’s being tackled on three fronts: care access, digital therapeutics, and the digital workforce. It’s an enormous lift, and one that will require support from executive leadership, buy-in from users, and partnerships in which both parties are “philosophically aligned upfront.”

Recently, Johnson spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO, about the approach his team is taking to leverage “the real power of digital,” which he believes is “to make it easier for the consumer to engage with our services.” He also discussed the importance of ensuring innovations born out of Covid aren’t “wasted”; the challenges in executing a singular strategy across a large organization; and what healthcare can learn from other industries about creating a “great digital customer experience.”

LISTEN HERE USING THE PLAYER BELOW OR SUBSCRIBE THROUGH YOUR FAVORITE PODCASTING SERVICE. 



Key Takeaways



* There’s a lot of interest among players in other industries to solve healthcare’s challenges; what many don’t realize is just how challenging the not-for-profit world can be.

* Johnson’s strategy is focused on three key areas: the consumer transactional experience, the digital health experience, and the clinical experience. “It’s going to be busy.”

* For Banner, taking a service-line by service-line approach to creating a collaborative model helped build buy-in by showing physicians what the experience would look like.

* Having a governance council enables clinicians to funnel all of the digital apps and “make rational decisions about what has the highest value to the organization and meets all of our clinical care guidelines.”

* Part of Banner’s strategy is to do “front-end research with customers” and treat them as “partners in our design.”





Q&A with Jeff Johnson, Part 2 [Click here to view Part 1]

Johnson:  We are always looking outside of our industry to see how others who are further along have created great digital customer experiences, and how we can apply that in healthcare.

I think there’s a lot to learn from the way data is used to drive very personalized experiences; it’s something we’re continually getting better at. We also look outside the industry for partnerships. Part of our strategy is that we can’t do this alone — there will be some real key partnerships with partners in other industries to help us change healthcare.

 

“Alignment around the best interest of the patient”

Gamble:  Can it be challenging to find the right people or partners to work with?

Johnson:  It can be. That is a challenge; it’s also what makes it interesting. There’s a lot of interest among other industries to solve the challenges of healthcare. Sometimes I think when they get into not-for-profit healthcare and they realize that some of the incentives are different than what they’re used to, that can be a challenge.

Choosing partners is something we do with great care. We need to make sure we have alignment around the best interest of the patient and their care.