@nxtstop1 Kind of like how we raise hell over awful airline experience? … oh wait. Patients accept it bc feel powerless to change. #HITsm
— Stephanie Zaremba (@s_zaremba) October 17, 2014
I was digging through my archive of draft posts and I came upon this tweet that I’d saved for future posting from last year. The tweet is still as applicable today as it was last year. Stephanie Zaremba raises an interesting point of comparison between the patient experience and the airlines experience. Can we learn something from this comparison?
Stephanie is totally right that the airline experience is going down quickly. I hate flying more and more every time I fly. That’s partially because I’m tired of being away from the family, but partially because they keep changing things and very rarely is the change for the better. However, do we really have a choice? If we need to travel, we purchase the plane ticket and grin and bear.
Does this sound a lot like healthcare? Sadly I think it does. Especially the last part. We all need healthcare and so we mostly just grin and bear. We’re seeing a slight change in that mindset with new high deductible plans. However, the medical industry is so complex that most patients just give up on trying to figure it out.
As I’ve thought about this comparison, I’ve wondered what would really change the patient experience. What could really cause things to change? Sadly, I think there’s a desire by many (doctors leading this charge) for a different system where it is a beautiful patient experience, but I don’t see a pathway to that new reality from our current reality.
Reminds me of one of my favorite thought exercises. What if you created an EHR that was focused on the patient and patient care and not on billing and government regulations? That EHR would look totally different than what we have today. Maybe it would look like a Care Management System.