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Millennials very cost-and-convenience conscious about healthcare

millies

Millennials might be tough medical customers, suggests a Modern Healthcare article.

It reports:

“Providers are watching the millennial generation, which is known in the industry for opting for the convenience and immediacy of retail and urgent care, rather than the traditional appointment-based primary-care relationship….”

{A survey found  that Millennials “are more than twice as likely to research providers on websites such as Yelp, Consumer Reports and Angie’s List, and 32% of millennials said they’ve switched providers when they were dissatisfied, a rate that is 12 percentage points higher than that of other generations.

“A millennial’s dissatisfaction can come from a variety of factors, though cost was highlighted as a major issue. Sixty percent of millennials said cost influenced their evaluation of a provider, and millennials cited it as a significant reason for why they’d leave a provider. Forty-one percent of millennials said they have postponed seeking healthcare because it was too expensive, and 21% said they have a high-deductible health plan….”

“Millennials are also big fans of alternative, retail-style care sites, with 43% of millennials reporting they’ve used an urgent-care site in the past year, and 23% saying they’ve used a retail health clinic in that time frame. Not surprisingly, millennials were less likely to have seen a primary-care physician in the past year.

“Millennials are looking for convenience and customer service, and they’re not necessarily looking for a long-term, in-depth relationship. It’s a pretty big paradigm shift,”  Halee Fischer-Wright, M.D., CEO of the Medical Group Management Association, told Modern Healthcare

To read more, please hit this link.


Marketing ‘microhospitals’

mobile

Next in hospital marketing? Mobile microhospitals?

Ron Shinkman writes in FierceHealthcare about the rise of microhospitals and even “bedless hospitals” as hospitals “spin off specialty lines designed to serve certain niches of patients.” We at Cambridge Management  Group have been commenting on these phenomena  — so  indicative of the intense  economic and clinical changes, and  near-chaos, in America’s healthcare “system” in 2016.

So {p]erhaps “2016 could be called the year of the microhospital,”  which have only a few beds and are usually built in an urban or suburban areas

“Those services are not only more convenient for patients, but they also aim to cut the overhead expenses of hospital operators. For example, it is a lot less expensive to operate a microhospital than a major teaching facility,” Mr. Shinkman writes.

“And rather than fragmenting services, organizations that offer … specialty service lines also find it helps to blur the lines between acute care and urgent care, the latter being not only more difficult to market but often subject to lower reimbursement rates than typical hospital inpatient rates.”

“Some industry observers also see them as an alternative to urgent care facilities, a concept that can be more challenging to market to patients than an actual hospital.”

And, Mr. Shinkman adds: “If a minihospital or standalone ER doesn’t cut it, how about a hospital without beds? That’s another service line that appeared to take flight in 2016.”

“Bedless hospitals provide many of the same services as regular hospitals, including an emergency room, infusion services and sometimes even helipads. But patients do not stay overnight. Experts believe patients at these facilities get similar care to what they would receive at regular hospitals, but with a lower risk of contracting infections.”

But can a “bedless hospital” really be called a ”hospital”? The triumph of medical marketing?

To read all of Mr. Shinkman’s piece, please hit this link.


5 big stories from 2015

 

Hospitals & Health Networks lists these five important stories from 2015 :

Service-line Management: A Behind the Scenes Road to Value

“Value opens the door to participating in new payment models. To that end, hospitals are eyeing better cost and quality equations.

Urgent Care 2.0: New Entrants Help Spur the Evolution of an Old Model

Payers and investors are buying urgent care clinics, while hospitals are forging partnerships to add consumer-friendly access points for patients.

Genomics: The Future Gold Standard of Medicine?

NorthShore University HealthSystem dives into personalized medicine, looking to lead the field in the new genetic wave of health care.

Bioelectronic Device Could Revolutionize Care for Inflammatory Disease

If proved to be effective and safe, the treatment could transform the care of patients suffering from such conditions as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.

Public Partners in Population Health
“Mandated community health needs assessments — a less-talked-about provision of the Affordable Care Act — may turn out to have a big impact on the transformation of health care.”


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