What are consumers demanding from modern #healthcare? #mhealth #telemedicine #healthIT #digitalhealth #EMR #EHR #HIT pic.twitter.com/dauwcT09ke
— Li Loo (@loohuaili) August 13, 2016
This represents some really fascinating data and illustrates a major trend around consumer demand in healthcare. More and more patients are comfortable with some form of electronic healthcare. Over time I’m sure that this acceptance is going to grow into pure demand for these type of modern healthcare options. Are you prepared for this change?
Right now, most doctors don’t need to offer the services described above. Patients don’t generally choose their doctor using the above criteria, but over time I think that will likely change. As patients get the first glimpse of how much easier a telemedicine visit was as compared to an office visit, they’re going to want more. It’s the natural process of how these things evolve.
My fear is that many small practices are asleep at the wheel in this regard. This will likely lead to problems since their big health system competitors are going to roll this out in a broad way that could make it hard for small practices to compete if they don’t get on it early. Plus, large health system competitors will be able to do things like offer 24 hour services that a small practice just can’t reasonably offer.
At the end of the day, every small practice needs to ask themselves, what am I doing to create an amazing patient experience for those in my care. Small practices that do this will be successful and retain patients. Those that continue practicing business as usual will likely run into difficulties as consumer driven healthcare starts to take over.