What are the first steps a healthcare provider can take to better emulate e-commerce?

Episode Transcript

Moderator:  Welcome to One Question with UpTop Health and today, our first question is what are the first steps a healthcare provider can take to better emulate e-commerce? and Craig, can you start us off, please?

Craig: All right, what are the first steps they can take to emulate e-commerce? I think really understanding and believing that health care is becoming an experience industry more so than just a straight delivery industry. What I mean by that is really looking at the patient and the member as a consumer; as an individual who is used to consumer experiences and expects those consumer experiences, then seeing how you can deliver those experiences – rather than focusing on productivity and efficiency and processing as your metrics. So, really looking at your business and your industry from the lens of the consumer is the first step.

Once your team has bought into that belief, then really looking at what it is that those users are trying to accomplish and what the biggest friction points are. Often times, if you think about it from your own experience, it’s okay, “I have to get this this procedure done” or “I need to get checked on this,” “is this provider within the network for my insurance?” So it’s really looking at the provider search and then after that it’s really thinking about, “that provider is in the network are they good?” “What are the ratings and reviews?” “What’s the social proof?” And then from there it’s “when are they available?” “How do I schedule an appointment” and things like that, trying to reduce the friction and make it a more effortless experience in those areas is a great first place to start Mike, how about you?

Michael: As Craig said, we’re focusing on specific areas. I was trying to think of more philosophical ways in which an organization can approach it and what I mean by that is, e-commerce, you know, they operate pretty lean, more lean probably than a healthcare organization. And in order for them to do that, their internal processes are a little bit sharper, more efficient; a little bit more agile. I think that a healthcare organization would need to look inwards a bit philosophically and try to mimic, fine-tune their internal processes to be able to output to the areas that you’re talking about to be able to fix and improve. That’s probably where a lot of the issues arise internally. If that part is fine-tuned, they can focus on incremental improvements and specific pain points like you mentioned earlier.

Moderator: Great, thanks guys.