Check out this incredible insight that Gabriel Perna shared on Twitter:
My latest blog – in which I tell the @AmerMedicalAssn retail clinics are not the enemy, inconvenience is https://t.co/Y3RXR25yUl pic.twitter.com/DjCqYn3hgw
— Gabriel Perna (@GabrielSPerna) June 16, 2017
What a great insight and something that most of the entrenched healthcare people don’t understand. Retail clinics are not the enemy, inconvenience is.
In many ways, it reminds me of the approach that taxi cabs took to Uber and Lyft. Taxis described them as evil as opposed to understanding why consumers wanted to use Uber and Lyft instead of a taxi cab. If the taxi cab industry would have understood the conveniences that Uber and Lyft provided customers, they could have replicated it and made Uber and Lyft disappear (or at least they could have battled them more effective than they’ve done to date).
Gabriel Perna further describes the issues of retail clinics and AMA’s approach to retail clinics in his article and this excerpt:
There are many reasons for this phenomenon [growth of retail clinics], but more than anything though, retail clinics are convenient and many physician offices are not. Because of this, the AMA shouldn’t be trying to treat the retail clinics as some kind of foreign invader, but rather use their rise to prominence as a way to guide physician practices forward. For instance, getting in to see a doctor shouldn’t be a three-week endeavor, especially when the patient is sick and needs attention immediately. However, that’s what has happened. Personally, I’ve been told “the doctor doesn’t have anything open for at least a month” more times than I can count.
It’s simple supply and demand. If you or your child needs to see someone immediately because of an illness and your doctor’s office can’t take in you for a week, and there happens to be a retail clinic down the street, guess where you’re going? Any hesitations you may have over your care being fragmented, the limited ability of your retail clinic physician, or anything else will go out the window pretty quickly.
I agree completely with the idea that convenience is key. However, what Gabriel doesn’t point out is that the fact that doctors have a 3 week waiting list for patients is why they don’t care about offering convenience to their patients. They have enough patients and so they don’t see why they should change.
You can imagine the taxi cab industry was in a similar position. They had plenty of people using their taxi service. They didn’t see how this new entrant could cause them trouble because they were unsafe and whatever other reasons they rationalized why the new entrant wouldn’t be accepted by the masses. Are we seeing the same thing with retail clinics vs traditional healthcare? I think so. Will it eventually catch up to them? I think so.
What’s even more interesting in healthcare is that retail clinics are just one thing that’s attacking the status quo. Telemedicine is as well. Home health apps and sensors are. AI is. etc etc etc. All of these have the potential to really disrupt the way we consume healthcare.
The question remains: Will traditional healthcare system be disrupted or will they embrace these changes and make them new tools in how they offer care? It took the taxi cab industry years to adapt and build an app that worked like Uber and Lyft. However, it was too late for them. I don’t think it’s too late for healthcare, but it’s getting close.