E-Consumers Set Health Care's Agenda

Healthcare Financial Management, July, 2001 by Ronald R. Long

E-commerce has become a commonplace practice in the lives of many Americans. Many of us have purchased books from Amazon.com, bid on items on e-bay, renewed our HFMA memberships online, or purchased airline tickets at any number of discount travel Web sites. Frankly we have all probably wondered what we did before the Internet came along to simplify our purchasing experiences.

According to David Byrne, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection of the European Union, "With the Internet revolution, we are on the verge of the most fundamental transformation since Henry Ford put society on wheels. The language of e-commerce, e-tailing, and e-business signals that we are all moving into a hyphenated e-conomy. ... In this cybereconomy, without the traditional reassurance of bricks and mortar, a new policy environment is needed to help overcome the barriers to consumer confidence. And for many businesses, consumer confidence is the holy grail."

We in health care may feel we have a strong relationship with our customers because our customers still rely overwhelmingly on our bricks-and-mortar operations for the services they need. Therefore, consumer confidence in our services, we think, should remain relatively high.

Think again. The Institute of Medicine's reports on medical errors sent a shiver through many healthcare consumers. Healthcare organizations should be on notice that consumers are going to be peering very closely over their shoulders in the future. The baby-boom generation, in particular, is the questioning generation. As boomers entering the Medicare population in ever-increasing numbers, they will be an awesome force with which to be reckoned.

Web sites offering consumers vast amounts of information about healthcare services have proliferated. For example, www.virtualhealthfair.com offers comprehensive healthcare information, including a virtual lab, "where you can learn about, understand, and interpret common lab tests," including fecal occult blood test, urinalysis, and dozens more.

But clinical information will not be the only information consumers will be seeking. They will demand specific information about the quality and cost ratings of health plans and providers. They will want to keep an active eye on their medical records, which largely will become electronic. They will be the watchdogs of the watchdog legislation on privacy and security of personal health information. Healthcare organizations that want to maintain consumer confidence will have to address the virtual relationship that will become a larger and larger part of their interactions with patients and family members.

Financial managers must understand the strategic role of information technology in the future consumption of health care. We must take the lead in our organizations in proactively anticipating these and other emerging trends and being unafraid to make our plans big and bold.

Such boldness may cut against the grain of traditionally conservative financial types, but the stakes are high. Technology is changing exponentially and with hospital profit margins getting slimmer all the time, the critical edge technology can give to a provider can spell the difference between success and bankruptcy. Now is not the time to pinch pennies or wait to see what happens to "the other guy" who is quicker out of the blocks. The opportunity cost of not investing in new technology, especially technology that will bring our organizations into closer contact with healthcare consumers, is too high.

The reality of limited financing for these bold plans also forces us to be creative, to try to leverage our existing technology in innovative ways. For example, few of us are without e-mail networks. We need to think of ways to use our network infrastructure to increase our interactions with our colleagues, our suppliers, our employees, and our customers, while at the same time reducing our costs.

Our boards and employees will be looking to us for leadership. Our customers will be looking to us for reliable, confidential, and useful service. We must be ready to lead @ the speed of light.