Readers Write: Reducing Friction in the Healthcare Ecosystem: Why Convenience, Access, and Patient Experience are Key

Reducing Friction in the Healthcare Ecosystem: Why Convenience, Access, and Patient Experience are Key
By Vytas Kisielius

Vytas Kisielius is CEO of ReferWell.

The future of healthcare relies on our ability to adapt and improve how we meet the needs of patients. Despite recent advances in technology, scheduling difficulties, low appointment show rates, siloed information, and obscure reporting continue to hinder access to care, health outcomes, and care quality. To overcome this friction related to getting people to the doctor, it is essential to prioritize convenience, access, and patient experience. Many other industries have made this shift, but healthcare has been a laggard in addressing this friction. Overcoming it is the key to closing care gaps, decreasing visit no-shows, and fostering patient engagement and retention.

Defining Friction and Its Impact on Patient Care

“Friction” in healthcare significantly impacts patient care and satisfaction, manifesting through:

1. Patient expectations versus reality: The gap between high patient expectations and the reality of poor care experiences, scheduling errors, and missed appointments leads to dissatisfaction and revenue losses. In study after study, consumers report that one negative experience trumps several positive ones in their decision-making regarding repeat business (patient retention) and satisfaction with their experience (which affects CAHPS). At the same time, providers complain about patients who no-show for appointments, so rather than risk losing the revenue associated with those visits, many will routinely double-book their schedules and assume it’s okay to make the patients wait if both show up at the appointed time. Lack of understanding and empathy on both sides increases the friction.

2. Access and operational hurdles: Patients often struggle to find providers, schedule appointments, and navigate insurance complexities, leading to a preference for more accessible healthcare options. All too often, once a patient calls three or four offices selected randomly from their health plan’s portal and finds none of them have availability, they declare, “There’s no access from my plan,” when, in fact, there is available capacity spread throughout the provider network. More friction and frustration on the part of both parties – the patient thought there was no availability and the providers with available slots saw the time go to waste. Like an airline seat, once the flight takes off, an unused seat represents revenue that is forever lost.

3. Perception and trust issues: Many patients feel their health history is not fully understood by their providers. This, combined with negative perceptions of support staff (who in most cases don’t view their jobs as providing customer service but rather as providing support to their doctor employer), long wait times, and billing issues, erodes trust and confidence in the healthcare system. For all too many providers who entered medicine “to heal the sick,” the requisite training in bedside manner took a back seat to the study of symptoms and diagnoses and procedures. Another opportunity to create friction.

4. Data hurdles: When a patient is referred to a specialist following a visit to a primary care provider, the onus to find the right provider and schedule the appointment is often on the patient. Simple questions like, “What GI specialists near me take my insurance and have open appointments?” become research projects. And when they finally do find a participating specialist with availability, many a patient’s last thought is to provide a copy of their relevant medical history, including the notes of the PCP visit, in order to aid the specialist in providing the right treatment.

5. Scheduling issues: During an appointment, whether in a provider’s office or a virtual visit, or in a follow-up care call, the patient is commonly ready and willing to schedule their next appointment. Unfortunately, all too often the provider or their staff does not have the necessary information at their fingertips at that critical moment to help. In fact, in many cases the provider doesn’t think it’s their job to get the next appointment (with someone else) scheduled since, historically, the information about who takes what insurance, who performs which specialties/subspecialties/procedures at what locations and who of them has availability hasn’t been easily obtained – hence, the onus is left on the patient.

The Impact of Friction on Patients

As evidenced by these examples, when patients encounter friction, their access to care is impeded, leading to negative consequences for their health, well-being, and satisfaction with the entire process. Remember also that we typically seek care when we’re not feeling our best, shortening patience and empathy further. Have you ever taken an airplane flight when you didn’t feel 100% healthy? Normally acceptable minor inconveniences or delays can become positively irritating.

One of the primary impacts of friction is increased patient dissatisfaction. When patients face long wait times, encounter administrative hurdles, or experience difficulties navigating the healthcare system, their satisfaction levels plummet. This dissatisfaction can result in patients seeking alternative healthcare options or avoiding necessary care altogether, leading to potentially adverse health outcomes.

Friction also affects patient engagement. When patients face obstacles in accessing their healthcare information or participating in their health management, their engagement levels decrease. This lack of engagement hampers the effectiveness of future healthcare interventions and compromises patient outcomes. It’s a vicious cycle.

These challenges underscore the need for payers and providers to streamline processes, improve experiences and foster a more patient-centered approach to care.

Investing in Patient Experience as a Pathway to Improved Healthcare

Investing in the patient experience is not just a moral imperative but a strategic one, which can offer improved healthcare outcomes for patients and financial success for providers. In fact, healthcare organizations that focus on the patient experience as a critical factor in driving economic success can dramatically increase their recurring revenue. With every dollar invested in enhancing patient experience, a significant ROI, ranging from seven to 10 times the initial expenditure, is observed. This dramatic ROI is attributed to repeat visits and retention, positive word of mouth and referrals, better online reviews, and a better reputation and brand loyalty.

As we look ahead, it is important to acknowledge that we are all healthcare consumers who can relate to the struggle of finding and scheduling the care we need at a time and a place that is convenient for us. While it is easy for patients, providers, and healthcare leaders alike to name the usual obstacles – who takes what insurance, overly complicated appointment scheduling processes, and the question of who’s responsible for sharing the information back with the primary care provider – these obstacles are not insurmountable.

To truly deliver on the promise of better healthcare, we must work together to make the process of finding, scheduling, and following through with care appointments as seamless as possible for the patient. That will, in turn, improve provider experience and reimbursement rates while helping to close care gaps – reducing friction for patients and positively impacting HEDIS and CAHPS scores for providers and health plans.