Dimensions and Service Ecosystem of Children's Patient Experience Co-creation

Abstract

The economic era today is emphasized by experiences and companies globally are increasingly positing customers’ experiences at the heart of their strategies. At the same time, healthcare is undergoing a fundamental shift in business and operating models to survive with rising healthcare costs, increasing volume of patients and increasing complexity of healthcare service ecosystem. The increased complexity of healthcare ecosystem makes managing of healthcare’s customer experiences, namely patient experiences, difficult. Patient interacts with these multiple actors of the ecosystem but assesses the experience in a dynamic and holistic way, meaning that every actor in an ecosystem participates to experience co-creation and influences to patients determinations of total experience. However, current knowledge on this complex yet important topic is at nascent stage. Therefore, to explore this phenomenon and to develop theory of the research field, this study aims to answer the following main research questions: What does the dimensions children’s patient experience co-creation consist of? What is the service ecosystem that co-creates the children’s patient experience? To answer these research questions and to study this multi-level phenomenon a qualitative field study was conducted. The data used in this study included primary data and secondary data deriving from previous LAPSUS-project interviews. Primary data of 6 ecosystem actor interviews were collected through semi-structured interviews that were supported by illustrative drawings. Interviews and drawings were recorded and transcribed. Secondary data consisted of 23 semi-structured healthcare staff interviews and 18 narrative patients’ parent interviews. The extensive data was thematically analyzed with coding framework based on preliminary analysis of secondary data and a review of literature of dimensions of service experience co-creation, patient experiences, service ecosystems and healthcare ecosystems. As a result of this thesis, model on dimensions of patient experience co-creation and framework on children’s healthcare service ecosystem were developed. Model on dimensions of patient experience co-creation consisted five co-creational dimensions: spatial, temporal, factual, emotional and locus dimension. Framework on children’s healthcare service ecosystem included 11 different actor groups that were located in and beyond service setting. Actor groups were divided to 4 distinct categories that were healthcare actors, social and welfare services actors, ecosystem supportive actors and family, friends and other social group actors.