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With the rise of everything being available at the drop of a pin from movies to books, it is no surprise that the healthcare industry now faces the growth of consumerism in its own market. Luckily, for providers in the urgent care field, they have gotten a head start and predicted the rise of consumerism as a whole and have been able to structure their businesses around the needs of patients that need their care on the spot.
Max Lebow, MD, Medical Director of Reliant Immediate Care Medical Group Inc. explains that consumerism is one of the fundamental drivers of the growth of urgent care.
“People are no longer willing to wait the months, weeks, or even days to see their primary physician. In a world where you can get deliveries of anything you want within a day and you can get it your way anywhere, healthcare has had to join the revolution of consumerism throughout the world,” Lebow says.
Urgent care medicine, along with personalized medicine and concierge medicine, is the medical response to consumerism in the US. Medicine was never meant to be an on demand form of service, the system was set up was to make it doctor friendly and to benefit physicians. Urgent care represents the best value in medicine today, period. Where can you get a qualified provider whenever you want, or in most hours of the day, ready to see you, in most cases within 30 minutes? All for about $100, or little more. It just doesn’t exist anywhere else, so consumerism in medicine equals urgent care.”
When discussing keeping up with the consumerism climate, Lebow says there are two drivers in the equation.
Lebow says that consumerism has helped providers such as me and others who are independent of large hospital systems because we can respond quickly to the needs of our patients. Lebow says urgent care operators do things like study the flow of patients and make sure that they are open within the hours that the patients want them to be open. The business flow is strictly by what the patients want.
In addition, there are several trends in medicine that urgent care centers need to respond to, and are currently responding.
“The most important is the trend for on-demand medicine through telemedicine. Our patients now want the ability to access physicians and other providers through electronic means. Urgent care centers are taking a lead position in operating telemedicine services. In addition, larger organizations such as businesses are asking for telemedicine services for occupational medicine, or giving their employees to access to medical care while they are at work,” Lebow says.
“These are consumer trends that promote flexibility in being able to pay for visits through online paying. Other trends include new subscription based urgent care giving whole families access for a single monthly charge. In some communities it will work and in others it won’t. There are a lot of different trends in healthcare and urgent care is actively responding to them.”
Lebow adds that medicine and competition now go hand in hand, and urgent care has the ability to remain competitive because it has doctors available on-site and who are able to participate in on-demand care.
Key Management Steps and More
William Williams, COO at 7 Day Clinic says that despite meeting the basic needs of consumerism, the importance of cost effective medical service is obvious because it helps get patients the care that they need.
Greg Pittman, clinical director of 1st Care Medical Center agrees and says that the way that his practice implement this, is they offer memberships to people that don’t have health insurance.
“We have a membership like a gym that you can join for 50 dollars a month. You can come in and see me as many times as you need to, and we discount the procedures, lab work. It makes it affordable, so the common Joe can get the health care they need,” Pittman says.
Also, tying in with medical service and the on demand mentality of the modern patient, Williams says his business also creates efficiencies so that providers can operate at an increased capacity, with primary focus being on volume.
Williams says that his clinics use an electronic health record system as well as thin-clients and CPUs on a localized protected network. He adds that his clinics also use VPN through internet access so that they are continually HIPAA compliant. However, unlike other providers in a consumerism based world, Williams believes more in technique over technology, once the patient moves beyond the front desk.
“As far as technology that is directly serving the patient, we are probably a low-tech portion of the world. We don’t have fancy gizmos and devices. We use chemistry, but we don’t invest money on the newest and greatest diagnostic tools, unless it can assist us. In our field, with what we deal with in ambulatory care, there is not really a great need for that. We have X-rays in clinic, we outsource anything beyond that like CT Scans or MRIs,” Williams says.
Lebow contributes to this idea by discussing the importance of quality as well as catering to consumerism.
“As far as quality, when people are talking about urgent care, it doesn’t enter into the conversation near enough, as far as I am concerned. Everything is based on quality medical care. There is nothing we do that doesn’t go through the lens of quality care. If there is something that we are considering doing, it has to either improve quality care, or at a minimum be quality care neutral. If there is anything that we do that negatively affects quality of care for individual patients, then it should not be done regardless of what the business ramifications are,” he says.
“One cautionary note, your use of consumerism should augment, not detract from the quality, of medical care. Quality medical care must remain bedrock of everything that providers do. The movement in consumerism, in most cases, should improve the confidence that the patient has come to the right place, but it must be backed up by quality medical care at every point of the patient visit.”
Williams says he believes a key part of what his business does revolves around people being able to literally drive up and walk in just like a retail store.
“That helps with their convenience. They know right where they are going. They are greeted immediately at our clinics; they don’t have to climb stairs, take elevators or go to desks,” Williams says.
He adds that his clinics are successful because due to the ease of location, patients are seen and served in a very prompt manner.
“I think they appreciate that from the time they take the few steps from their car to our front door. Convenience is very important,” Williams says.
Beyond the accessibility of the center, Lebow says owners want to have a pleasant and welcoming environment for patients.
“You need to have a clean well appointed office space, and staff with some training in basic patient friendly techniques. We look to the hospitality industry for cues out to put patients at ease. Everybody wants to be treated like they are going to a five star hotel. However, remember that for your staff to treat patients well, the staff themselves have to be treated well,” he says.
“Patients also want to be able to see and learn about you through social media. One of our clinics just won an award from Yelp!, for high number of five star ratings. You want to make sure that your social media presence is active. Clinics want to make sure that they are getting good reviews and that they are highlighting those reviews and working with social media to make sure that patients can find you, and that the information is accurate and continually updated. Social media is a very active process.”
A final point that Lebow says is that modern patients expect a social media presence.
“We monitor our results in social media. We know when we ask our patients who come in, about 35 percent of them say they did a Google search to find us, and about 25 percent of them check our Yelp! Ratings and that is just the people that tell us about that; there may be more,” Lebow says.
Downsides to Consumerism
Lebow says that people say that there are downsides to following the trend of consumerism, but he is not so sure. Lebow believes that if the business is patient friendly, it can go with the flow.
“I think there are occasional downsides if you are trying to push the people through the system so quickly that you are not giving them enough time in front of the provider, and that can be a problem. We want our entire visit to last 60 minutes, but I don’t fret too much about 80 or 90 minutes if it takes that long to register them, see them, and make sure they get their discharge instructions,” Lebow says.
“Patients are interested in getting in and out quickly, but they also want to feel like they have gotten the experience and that people have paid attention to what they need. If patients know that the clinic is doing things to help them, the sweet spot in there is not necessarily the fastest time, but it is the quality of time with the patient.”
If you have an interest in learning more about the subject matter covered in this article, the M&A process or desire to discuss your current situation, please contact Blayne Rush, Investment Banker at 469-385-7792 or Blayne@AmbulatoryAlliances.com.
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