Physicians May See Shakeup as Patients Have More Care Options

March 4, 2016 - Docs say to embrace innovation, compete with quality and efficiency

Just as Uber has shaken up the taxi industry, healthcare may be in for a similar seismic shift, and physicians need to embrace innovative ways of doing business or they may see their patients turn to other alternatives, two doctors write in a perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine.

As patients have more options to receive healthcare outside a traditional primary care physician's office, doctors need to embrace innovation and compete by offering quality and efficiency, write Allan S. Detsky, M.D., from the University of Toronto Department of Medicine and the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and Alan M. Garber, M.D., from Harvard University.

"Uber's message for healthcare is clear. Providers have three choices: ignore innovators and hope for the best; call for increasing regulation to make it harder for innovators to enter the market; or compete on quality and efficiency, disruptive though that might be," they write.

Healthcare organizations and doctors are going to have compete with successful venture-funded innovative healthcare companies that are already disrupting the industry, they say. As healthcare moves to value-based care, innovative companies are rethinking care provision.

One of those companies, ZocDoc, an online scheduling service that helps people find and book an appointment with a doctor, has already disrupted the patient/physician relationship, Adam Powell, Ph.D., a health economist and president of Payer+Provider Syndicate, said in an interview with Medscape Medical News. Powell agrees physicians need to both embrace and confront innovations by finding ways to deliver more value. For instance, physicians may benefit by engaging with scheduling tools like ZocDoc, he said.

Physicians can take lessons from these new start-ups. ZocDoc spokesperson Keri Peterson, M.D., a New York-based internist, shared key actions physicians can take to build rapport with patients before, during and after appointments, in a previous interview with FiercePracticeManagement.

By Joanne Finnegan
Posted on FiercePracticeManagement
To learn more:
- check out the Medscape article

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