Contributor: The Digital Shift—Meeting Modern Patient Expectations

Health systems are long overdue for meeting basic patient needs. In a growing competitive landscape that includes the country’s largest retailers (ie, Amazon, Walmart, and CVS), patients have more choices than ever and their expectations for convenient digital tools are being shaped outside of health care. So how do the country’s top health care systems stack up? It’s clear that current health system capabilities fall short of consumer preferences, leaving significant opportunities for progressive, consumer-centric systems to distinguish themselves from competitors.

Patient Response Highlights:

• In aggregate, the majority of patients (55%) prefer digital channels for key health care interactions, including for 9 out of 12 of the tasks surveyed.
• Location and provider searches represent the highest preferences for digital channels (72% and 67% respectively), whereas the lowest preference for digital channels was appointment scheduling (39%).
• The highest-rated criteria for selecting a primary care provider were timely appointments (74% rated as ‘very important’ or ‘must have’) and proximity (67%).

Health System Capabilities:

Although imperfect, the U.S. News Best Hospitals “honor roll” recognizes 22 of the nation’s highest performing hospitals across 15 specialties and 21 procedures and conditions:

When auditing these top health system consumer websites in February 2024 for patient preferences, we discovered that:

• 64% offered some online scheduling capability, but only 36% allowed filtering providers based on this function.
• Only 18% of systems (4 of 22 audited) allowed sorting their provider search by availability, whereas 32% offered sorting by distance.
• On average, systems had less than half of the following key features: Online scheduling, Filter by online scheduling, Sort providers by distance, Sort providers by availability

It’s abundantly clear that patients—like most consumers—prefer digital tools to accomplish the essential tasks of engaging with their health care. Also, they prioritize conveniences like timeliness and proximity over individual provider profiles when selecting primary care. And yet, despite this strong demand, we see the “top” health care systems in the country lagging in providing essential digital tools like online scheduling and sorting by availability.

The next phase of health care will be defined by health care systems that improve their digital capabilities to meet modern patient demands. If not required to distinguish themselves from their traditional competitors (ie, other health systems in crowded markets), they will be required to prevent market share losses to new digital-native entrants like Amazon.

By embracing digital transformation, health care providers can offer a more efficient, patient-centered experience that aligns with modern consumer expectations.