What do health care consumers want?

In the United States, consumers have a lot of choices.  The supermarket shelves are full of different brands of milk, cheeses and crackers.  On Amazon.com, I just found 42,937 results from a search for "running shoes".  Consumers have also been trained to be quite savvy in choosing among these multitude of options.  Most of us have no trouble picking something to buy on Amazon.com or finding an airline ticket on Kayak.com.  When it comes healthcare, however, we are just starting to learn what health care consumers want and how to meet their needs.

PwC's Health Research Institute (HRI) surveyed 6,000 consumers around the US and produced a report titled Customer experience in health care: The moment of truth.  The report is informative and thought-provoking for those of us in health care IT and health services marketing.  Following are some of what it says about health care consumers:

• Consumers have the same top priorities in choosing a doctor as in deciding where they would buy their clothing, i.e. convenience and speed.  Pricing appear to be less important when it comes to choosing a doctor.



Only 8% of respondents said pricing is the most important driver in choosing a healthcare provider

• Health care customers are significantly less willing to report positive experiences than customers of other retail businesses.

Only 44% of health insurance customers will share positive experience within 1 month of receiving service

• Consumers rely heavily on personal recommendations in choosing doctors.
• Health care consumers are much less forgiving than retail consumers in giving a return business if they were dissatisfied by their experience.

The fact that health care consumers value convenience and speed is further supported by the popularity of retail clinics.  The use of retail clinics have gone up 74% since 2007 from 9.7% to 23.5%, according to HRI.  This is the rise of On-Demand Healthcare.  Besides locally owned retail clinics, we certainly have seen Walgreen's Take Care Clinics and CVS' MinuteClinic proliferating.  This may not yet disprove the theory that people want to establish a relationship with their doctors, but it certain shows that a growing segment of the population is fine with not having a relationship. 

This report also points to a challenge that Yelp.com and Groupon does not face in marketing restaurants.  Consumers value personal recommendations and peer reviews when choosing a physician, but they are less willing to review doctors.  A scan of Yelp, HealthGrades.com and Vitals.com shows that the percentage of doctors who get reviewed is much lower than the percentage of restaurants or auto repair shops that have reviews.  As there are inevitably some fake reviews in the mix, this makes the small number of physician reviews less valuable and trustworthy.  It isn't helpful for consumers who are trying to decide which doctor is right for them.

With all that said, what health care consumers want is becoming increasingly important, as the HRI report points out.  Consumers are pushed to share a higher portion of their health care costs and make choices that they have not had to make in the past.  Consumers are also becoming more savvy about using the web to research and learn about their treatment options.  Will health care providers, insurers and health services marketers rise up to meet their needs?