A friend of mine recently moved to California and was telling me about her experience visiting a designated doctor on her insurance plan. She was forced to wait over an hour to see the doctor and then felt like she had gone back in time, like some sort of twilight zone, because the doctor was using a paper chart. WOW!
That is two strikes against the outdated doctor and additionally for the insurance program that lists this doctor! It is 2019 and the doctor was paper charting? Could that be part of why my friend had to wait so long to see the physician. Her reaction? "I am not going back there!"
The attached article in Medical Economics by Josh Weiner, Chief Operation Officer at Solutionreach, is very informative on the price physician's should put on patient relationships - especially regarding technology. My only exception to his article is in describing today's patients as "flighty"... I don't think today's patients are flighty (given to capricious or unstable behavior), but rather they are empowered and refuse to accept perfunctory operations, especially when it comes to their healthcare. In less important aspects of our lives we refuse to accept less than stellar innovation. For instance, we update our mobile phones yearly and most of us would look at someone using a flip phone as outdated. We see rapid improvement in computers and modernize so our performance is strong. And don't get me started on transportation, entertainment, and many other aspects of our lives we expect to be improved year after year. How much more should we expect our healthcare to be thriving!
If you are a physician, and really care about your patients and your business, read this article! It will benefit you tremendously!
http://www.medicaleconomics.com/technology/can-you-put-price-patient-relationships
