My expectations for how I interact with the health sector are shaped by my experiences as a retail shopper, and my shopping habits have changed over the past few years. Just as I've become more resourceful and savvy and have ended up with retail products that are better for me, I'm confident this will hold true as I shop for health care and health insurance.
For example, I only make reservations at restaurants that use an online system (with a mobile app). When I shopped for a car, I went online to set the price limits of the model car I wanted and the car I wanted to trade in. I shop for and compare airline tickets at aggregators and then buy from the airline's site. I use my phone to show my boarding pass. And I shop for credit cards and loans, watching for the Annual Percentage Rate (APR).
The convenience, ease and transparency associated with retail shopping has changed dramatically, largely due to technology and the players that have emerged to either provide the frontend or facilitate the backend of this user experience. And as individuals take on more responsibility for their health insurance and healthcare costs, the expectations for convenience, ease and transparency in this realm will only grow.
How have these expectations played out so far in health? There are easy ways to schedule appointments online, clear pricing for discrete, high volume services at some retail clinics, symptom checkers and evolving efforts in comparative cost and quality information.
Now, as consumers move to public and private insurance markets, expectations for a helpful, online customer experience will also increase.
Health insurance is something few of us have had to think about. Historically, we'd have one, two or maybe three choices from our employer, try to make sense of the information and then select one. An effective health insurance marketplace has to help overcome the entrenched habits and challenges we have as shoppers in health. These habits and challenges include deferring to our benefits manager for our selections, a historical protection from actual healthcare costs and a lack of understanding of health insurance.
A retail equivalent would help consumers overcome these challenges and make insurance decisions by providing a framework or context. First, help the consumer understand their choices and why their choice of insurance makes a difference. Since most people don't know or understand why health insurance is important for themselves and their family, that context needs to be established. Second, it means helping people look beyond the premium. Most of us are ill-equipped to understand the likelihood of illness or accidents, let alone the impact of either on our finances. A good consumer experience means that the consumer should understand the potential dollars they may have to pay in addition to their premium – taking into account their deductible and their out-of-pocket maximum.
Then, if you take a page from Costco's playbook, you'll help the consumer focus on a few options that best meet their health needs and ability to handle financial exposure. Sometimes too many choices are overwhelming. Less can often be more, and at stores such as Costco, you select from four types of peanut butter instead of 20, leading to increased sales overall for that product and (presumably) higher customer satisfaction.
In fact, because we can't return health services we've purchased, the stakes are even higher and, in some ways, should have all the accoutrements you find when purchasing a high priced item: price transparency and multiple ways to access customer service if needed.
Now that health insurers have realized that their customer is the consumer and not the benefits manager, they have come to understand that a good consumer experience in purchasing insurance is a critical first step in achieving customer satisfaction and fundamental to creating longer term consumer engagement.
Technology and innovation have led to changes to our retail habits; our expectations as we shop for health insurance and health care will be no exception.