If Health Care Worked Like Amazon
With the Covid Pandemic, I have been using Amazon a lot! The experience is so good and effortless it made me wonder how great it would be if Health Care could be run like Amazon. Imagine this:
Log into your secure doctor's office website and you are recognized..."Hi Toni".
The web screen has easy navigation and point and click for "recent labs", "immunizations due", "make an appointment", "email the office", "update insurance info/address/credit card". etc.
The web screen provides a link for pricing of office visits, procedures and immunizations with your copay amount depending upon your personal insurance and deductible because it knows you.
The web screen has links for information on how to stay healthy and timely messages from the office that relate to your personal health issues. (healthy recipes, workout tips, managing high cholesterol or diabetes, exercises for arthritis etc)
After a visit or encounter an email arrives with the information your doctor provided all itemized and easy to understand with links if more instructions are needed.
Prescriptions can be refilled online with a click request from you and should you request (and pay for) delivery, it will arrive within 24-48 hours to your door. If it cannot be refilled, you will receive a message and instructions within a few hours.
Your medications are listed on your web page with instructions on how to take them and how long to take them.
After a visit, an easy 5 question email survey is sent out asking you to rate your experience.
Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee quality, medical diagnostic skill and compassion. You can't make a purchase return on health care like you can on Amazon. True exceptional health care cannot be commoditized like retail, nor should it be.
But certainly we have the technology to provide a better patient centered service than we do. Wouldn't it be great to use the Amazon web platform with its intuitive customer interface and make it work for Health Care.
