Earlier tonight, I succeeded in convincing myself that purchasing a new iPad from Apple was an important business decision. Lest you think I’m deluding myself, bear with me for a moment and read on.
A lot of people seem to describe the iPad as “cool” or “interesting” but I haven’t heard too many use words like “game changer” or “paradigm shifter.” But if you think about it, when was the last time the PC industry was able to deliver a fundamental shift in the way we interacted with the computer? The mouse in 1972?
My hunch is that the iPad represents a fundamentally new way of experiencing the Web and software, and I wanted to know what that experience is like. I mean, in all honesty, is it really that hard to imagine a patient viewing their medical information over an iPad? Or better yet, doesn’t it just *feel* intuitive that a doctor could easily do his templating in a sophisticated touch screen device like the iPad provided that this EHR software were designed for it?
But the subject of this post actually isn’t about the iPad itself — those thoughts are still cooking and will be ready for consumption a few months from now. This post is about the experience I had with Apple while buying the iPad and in the weeks prior visiting the Apple Store. I’ll describe it briefly in a minute. But first I want to ask this fundamental question:
Why can’t my experience at a medical practice be as great as my experience with Apple has been?
Let’s start by taking a look at my experience with Apple.
For starters, Apple is well branded. Everywhere you engage with Apple, you can’t help but notice the iconic Apple symbol. At this point, it doesn’t even need to say the word “Apple” since everyone recognizes it so much. But the consistency is awesome. The TV ads, the physical store, the products, the website, it’s always got the same feel, the same personality, the same Apple.
Then we’ve got the customer service experience I get at the store itself. I walked in a few weeks ago to fix my iPhone and one of the geeky-yet-edgy Apple store employees engaged me in a friendly yet helpful manner. He spoke to me in casual yet appropriate language, and after some conversation, I confirmed that he was indeed trained in the art of engaging customers. First build the rapport, then see what they’ve come to the store for. He knew what to do for my particular issue, and 15 minutes later I was taken care of.
A few days later I went on to the Apple Website to check out the iPad. Again great branding consistency, easy information I can consume on my own schedule, and visually attractive graphics to keep me interested but I wasn’t ready to buy just yet.
And a few days later — tonight — I finally broke down and bought one — again with a consistently branded and pleasant experience.
Now here’s the interesting part. How many PEOPLE did I actually engage with? How much WORK did Apple have to spend making me happy? How many ADDITIONAL RESOURCES did Apple have to come up with to serve me as a customer? Well, I needed 15 minutes from the Apple guy at the store…and, well, everything else was me absorbing advertising (like TV ads) or me engaging over the web. And boom $650 later, I’m a satisfied Apple customer. Obviously, I needed a product to buy, but that’s upfront research & development. One more customer buying it doesn’t consume that many additional resources. Basically, we’ve got heavy investment in infrastructure — designing the product, TV ads, website, etc. — but very little resource consumption PER CUSTOMER.
So back to the original question — why can’t my experience as a patient be this awesome, and this efficient?
I come from a family of physicians and through Omedix have worked with hundreds of them, and as I anticipate the responses two key factors come to mind:
Time. And money.
But here’s the thing. There’s a fundamental difference in how most medical practices approach the “customer experience.” Instead of investing heavily upfront in infrastructure that will almost automatically do it for them, more staff are hired to call patients, or more staff are hired to better engage with patients, or more brochures are purchased. But in either case the key is that the PER PATIENT COSTS go up. It’s like the Apple store equivalent of having more Apple people engage me when I walk in…which might be necessary if there were no info on Apple.com, but thanks to the infrastructure, I can do quite a bit of learning on my own and don’t need so much Apple people time.
This is the fundamental mentality I think more medical practices should adopt, and yet I have to criticize the Healthcare IT industry for in many ways failing to provide the software tools to create this automated patient experience.
When we’re ready, you’ll see some awesome new stuff announced here on the Omedix.com website, but in the meantime, suffice it to say we’re working on remedying this.
Ultimately, though, with a typical medical practice the key is that lots of incredibly useful data sits locked up in the Practice Management System or Electronic Health Record (EHR) System. Information like the last date the diabetic patient came in for a visit (which could tell you they’re due for another one), or the communication preference of the patient (which could tell you they ought to be contacted by email for their lab results), or the Blood Pressure data over the last 12 months (which could help the patient understand the importance of healthy living). To be honest, the data in these systems is so rich that more companies than I can count do nothing but pull the data, analyze it, and make useful conclusions for the practice or hospital.
For me, the key conclusion is that as practices look to become more competitive — to attract more patients — more lean — to save on expenses — and more innovative — to improve the quality of care, it simply isn’t possibly to throw more resources at the problem and increase the PER PATIENT costs. Instead, they’ve got to invest in the infrastructure to make the per patient costs DECREASE, and to automate as much as possible what is ultimately perceived by the patient as vastly more convenient.
Stay tuned for more info on these ideas, and on how the iPad works out!
