As if the current challenges we face in healthcare weren’t enough, our consumers, patients, and employee populations are undergoing significant demographic changes as well. At the heart of these changes are generational differences in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Delivering quality care now and in the future requires that we keep individual needs at the forefront of the care experience while also minding the gaps in care generated by macro-level differences in generational expectations. Next-generation Human Understanding is an awareness of these differences and a call to act now, plan for the near term, and prepare for what’s next. This paper highlights five key points:

01 The current challenges of healthcare may be exacerbated by generational influences among patients and employees, which carry with them shifts in expectations and behaviors.

02 Healthcare organizations currently serve six generations of patients and employ predominantly four generations—yet it isn’t always clear if/how we are designing patient/employee experiences with generation-based expectations in mind.

03 Healthcare is a results-driven industry, but the fact that new market entrants like Amazon and CVS are experience-forward competitors requires us to expand our focus and think of experience as the foundation of achieving results—especially since younger patients appear to be more apt to make choices that are disruptive to traditional care models.

04 Holistic experience management is a core leadership capability/responsibility that requires:

05 Next-generation Human Understanding addresses these concerns (and more) within the framework: