Not So Fast. Not Everything Has to Be Done Quickly, or
Remotely. Especially Healthcare.
We've
become too accustomed to getting everything we want at the moment we want it.
But maybe we should focus more on understanding the customer rather than
executing the transaction.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN
Jeff Bezos is very smart and very right when
he says that people don't really want to renegotiate the price of the ordinary
goods and services they buy repeatedly. We're lazy and we know it and most of
us decided long ago that it's simply not worth the time or effort to shop
around to save a few bucks -- especially when the world is largely convinced
that Amazon's real-time, automated repricing technology ensures that you're
getting the lowest available price anyway. The key word here, of course,
being available. The lowest price perception is actually only true
if you willingly confuse available with possible.
The lowest possible price -
typically dictated by aggressive competition in the marketplace - isn't often
available to Amazon shoppers because anti-competitive behavior on Amazon's part
prevents third-party sellers using Amazon's warehousing and shipping services
from offering better and cheaper pricing on their own products elsewhere - even
on their own websites. So, Amazon shoppers settle for the best prices that
Amazon chooses to offer. But, in the real world, I'm not sure that these nickel
and dime distinctions matter much when we're talking about toilet paper. Your
concerns change and become more substantive as the value proposition changes:
you care a lot more when it comes to buying the dishwasher than you do the
dishwashing pods. But that, too, is changing: these days you can pretty much
buy a television set sight unseen.
I've said for years now that, for the vast
majority of digital shoppers, except for those poor souls who have abandoned coupon
clipping for the pathetic joy of spending hours bargain hunting online,
our time is increasingly more important than modest amounts of
our money. Speed, ready access,
and convenience are what it's all about in large parts of our hectic
day-to-day lives. One-click purchasing was a brilliant innovation and the most
overt manifestation of the Bezos master plan to remove any deliberation,
calculation, or hesitation from consumers' buying decisions. The idea was to do
everything you could to eliminate thought from consumption. Fast and
frictionless. Click it and forget it and it'll be delivered in a flash.
That attitude is probably safe and somewhat
sane when you're talking about groceries and gifts, but what if you're talking
about cancer and chronic diseases? The problem with our perpetually progressive
service expectations is that we believe that the best practices and experiences
are readily and easily transferable among all of the various parts of our
lives. If Amazon is a one-click experience, why shouldn't our banking,
borrowing, one-click brokerage and betting interactions be just
as smooth and rapid? Why not try buying or selling a house with a couple of
clicks through Zillow, which can't even
remotely keep its own house in financial order?
There's obviously a reasonable and rational
line that needs to be drawn, but it's not clear that anyone's really paying
attention. Is it a matter of how many dollars are involved? Is it an age thing
at both ends? Too young to be involved in gambling on your phone when you're
barely old enough to drive or too old to be doing instant reverse home
mortgages because some huckster on TV says it makes sense?
How about when your life's on the line? Would
you really rather get a swift answer or a smart one when your health and
well-being are the matters at hand? Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that we
didn't learn any serious lessons from the Theranos debacle about imaginary
but rapid test results that were too good to be true. We're still all in a
hurry, we want to get quick, cheap and simple answers on the spot, and we're
too often willing to trade easy for exact.
I'm sure this attitude is a problem in many
industries but in healthcare, it's more like a sin. Two out of three
consumers surveyed recently said that they would prefer to use a digital
medical app rather than wasting time and money traveling to their doctor's
office and then burning more time waiting to be seen. Even before the COVID-19
pandemic, office visits to primary care doctors fell almost 20% over a two-year
period and, of course, many older doctors are retiring and not being replaced.
Remote digital care is certainly better than no access to care, but we've got
to help patients (especially those with potentially serious medical issues)
make the right choices.
COVID-19 and the explosion of telemedicine
really put one of the final nails in the coffin of the traditional
patient-doctor relationship, where you actually knew your doctor, visited in
person, and he or she knew you and your medical history. Today, your car
mechanic knows more about your car than the dialed up "doctor" you've
never met on some telemedicine service knows about your body and your medical
background. Similarly, while it's convenient to get a flu shot at CVS or
Walgreen's or have a bruise examined at an urgent care storefront clinic, but
what about reactions and complications? Do they call 911 or an ambulance for
you?
The know your customer (KYC) rules in the
financial industry-- as trivial, made-up, and superficial as they are-- at
least make a gesture toward the time-honored idea of understanding the people
you're dealing with to do a fair, reasonable and intelligent job of providing
advice, guidance and services to them. To date, I haven't seen much of a
similar effort in health care and, as a result, we've got millions of people
settling for remote and/or digital medical care because it's cheap and easy.
Their employers love it, too, even if it's not a smart bargain for them and
their families.
Now I realize that there are plenty of good
reasons to avoid a trip to the doctor's office: taking time off of work; taking
your kids out of school; waiting to see the doctor once you get there; too
often filling out the same paperwork for the umpteenth time; sitting surrounded
by a bunch of sick people; discovering that your alleged insurance doesn't
cover whatever; and - after all that - getting the "take two aspirins and
call me in the morning" diagnosis. But technology alone
isn't going to be a sufficient solution. Even if about 75% of the in-office
consultations would be treatable online. You don't want you or your family
members to be the exception to the rule.
Before we go overboard and turn all the family
docs into screen images whose skills, experience, and credentials we're all
asked to take for granted, I think we need to take a breath and ask for one
simple thing for and from all those people with serious concerns and medical
issues. We need to slow down, calm down, and tell ourselves and everyone around
us that not everything important and valuable can be done in an instant.
Some things will always take a certain irreducible amount of time and we
need to make enough time to address and deal with them properly.
Right now, we've got too many patients with
too little patience.
MAY 3, 2022
The
opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of
Inc.com.