Experience Economics: A Practical Link Between Experience and Performance in Healthcare

For many years, I have worked with healthcare leaders, public service organizations, and service-based clinics to improve patient and customer experience, strengthen operational clarity, and design systems that support better outcomes. Across all of this work, I have seen a consistent pattern. Client experience, from awareness through post-care support, has a profound influence on operational and economic performance. Experience matters because it shapes behaviour, and behaviour is one of the primary drivers of performance in healthcare. How people interpret pricing and value signals, how they respond to early communication, how confidently they book, whether they progress through care, and whether they return are all behavioural outcomes. These behaviours directly affect patient flow, demand stability, capacity utilization, and revenue reliability. When we look at experience through this lens, it becomes clear that experience is not separate from economics. It is one of the mechanisms through which economic performance is created or constrained. This is the foundation of Experience Economics. It is a practical way of understanding how experience influences the decisions people make and how those decisions shape operational and financial outcomes. Experience Economics is less about improving every part of the journey and more about identifying the moments where experience most strongly influences behaviour and therefore performance. When attention is focused on these moments, improvements in flow, utilization, and outcomes become more achievable and more predictable. Experience Economics brings together four elements that directly impact performance: Clarity about how value is created in your organization, including where revenue is generated, where capacity is constrained, and where value is lost A view of the patient journey that highlights the decision points that matter most to patients, providers, and the organization Behavioural insight into what supports momentum and follow-through, especially in early and transitional stages of care Targeted improvements that strengthen experience in ways that measurably improve performance, rather than diffuse or generic experience initiatives Seen this way, Experience Economics functions as both a diagnostic and a decision framework. It helps leadership teams understand what is driving performance today, prioritize where to focus attention, and identify the experience, behavioural, and operational changes most likely to generate meaningful improvements in outcomes and returns. This perspective applies across a wide range of care settings. Early in a care journey, small differences in clarity, sequencing, or communication can strongly influence whether people commit and progress. Later in the journey, reliability of follow-up and ease of re-engagement affect whether care plans are completed and whether demand remains steady. When scheduling, communication, and capacity are aligned, patient flow improves and operational pressure eases. These effects are not abstract. They are visible in return patterns, utilization rates, and revenue stability. Experience Economics helps leadership teams surface opportunities that are often invisible in traditional financial or operational reports. By connecting experience, behaviour, and economics, it creates a shared frame for understanding why performance looks the way it does and where change is most likely to matter. This shared understanding is especially valuable in complex healthcare organizations, where experience, operations, and finance are often viewed separately. A useful question follows naturally from this approach. If experience shapes behaviour and behaviour shapes performance, which moments in your organization have the greatest influence on patient decisions, and how intentionally are those moments designed? In my work across healthcare systems, health services, and private clinics, I have seen how focused adjustments to communication, sequencing, reliability, and flow can lead to clearer decisions, smoother progression, and stronger performance. These improvements rarely require large-scale change. They begin with a disciplined understanding of behaviour and economics, and with the decision to focus effort where it will have the greatest effect. I am focusing this next chapter of my practice on helping healthcare organizations use this perspective to diagnose performance challenges and design targeted improvements that strengthen flow, outcomes, and sustainability. If you are a healthcare leader, clinic operator, or consulting partner interested in this approach, I would welcome the opportunity to connect. Better experience supports better decisions. Better decisions support better care and stronger performance. Experience Economics brings these together in a practical, strategic way that helps healthcare organizations focus on what matters most.