I was on a flight from Chicago to Sacramento when the lymph nodes in my neck swelled up, cutting off my airway. The flight crew wanted to do an emergency landing to get me to a hospital as soon as possible. I began to panic — not because I couldn’t breathe but because I was terrified about how much it would cost to do an emergency landing. Not to mention the price for the ambulance ride and the bill from an out-of-state emergency room that may or may not be in my network.
I was 24 years old, and, like many Americans, I had learned to avoid any kind of medical care unless it was a true emergency, fully embracing an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality when it came to my health.
Despite my fears, the pilot and crew insisted on making the emergency landing. I spent four days in a Salt Lake City hospital. It wasn’t clear what caused my lymph nodes to swell, and I was told to follow up with my primary care provider when I returned to California. The next 18 months involved frequent mid-day trips to my doctor’s office for lab testing, resulting in taking off several weeks from work and an accumulation of medical debt that took years to recover from!
Sadly, not a whole lot has changed in health care. The biggest improvement has been health care’s rapid adoption of digital health, which has improved access by leaps and bounds for countless Americans. But even so, it’s not enough. Today, 78% of Americans still avoid or delay medical services, and 29% avoid or delay basic preventative care.
When patients miss their appointments, continuity of care is interrupted. Acute illnesses are more likely to go untreated and become chronic conditions with complications. For Americans already living with chronic conditions, skipped appointments, screenings, or lab work can have catastrophic effects on health outcomes.
Most Americans aren’t deliberately avoiding or delaying medical care. Instead, existing U.S. health care models — including digital-first models — continue to place too much burden on the patient. Rather than asking patients to jump through hoops to seek care, health care professionals should be asking themselves, “what can we do to make the patient experience frictionless and pleasant?”
What health care professionals can do right now to improve patient care
Plenty of people with health insurance, like the 24-year-old me, are still racked by the financial fear of outrageous medical bills and deterred by the inconvenience of pursuing care.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are five actions health care providers and payers can take to reduce friction and ease the burden off of patients.
- Educate patients
Education is the first step in helping reduce the burden of care on the patient. It’s a relatively easy and simple action for health care providers to take: inform patients of their options for more convenient services and facilitate the next (or first) steps to move patients through their care plan. This could mean referring them to a pharmacy that offers delivery, or a lab testing service that will meet them at their home.
- Encourage patient buy-in
While patient education is essential in creating an improved consumer experience, it alone won’t be enough to change behaviors and improve access. Following up on a care plan’s instructions may sound simple from the health care provider’s perspective, but even small steps can seem overwhelming or unnecessary for patients. One of the primary reasons patients don’t follow through with essential preventative screenings, maintenance medications for chronic conditions, or time-consuming diagnostics is that they don’t believe they “need” it. They can’t see or feel a problem, so they don’t prioritize getting care.
Sometimes patients need a little nudge of encouragement from their health care providers. The nudges can take the shape of benefits or incentives that prioritize convenience and holistic health options. With the proper encouragement, patients will be more likely to feel invested in their health care plan.
- Cost transparency
This one is painful. Most of us have experienced it: that unexpected arrival of a medical bill in the hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars for a procedure you thought was covered. I know this one well. It begins with a sinking feeling in the stomach, like a gut punch, that soon gives way to seething anger that the health care system is rigged and unfair.
Surprise medical bills are a major deterrent for patients and recognizing this, recently Congress has passed a law to prevent this from happening. Even when it’s a serious medical emergency, like what happened to me and my lymph nodes at 40,000 feet in the air, the fear of insanely high medical bills influences our decisions on how we should get care. The solution is cost transparency. Patients need to know precisely how much the care will cost and why certain procedures are priced the way they are.
- Prioritize convenient care for patients of lower socioeconomic status
All patients should be afforded the options for convenient, at-home, and virtual health care offerings. However, not all patients have equitable access to health care. Health care providers should place a special emphasis on prioritizing convenience and improving accessibility for those who face social barriers to care, such as lack of transportation, inability to take time off work, child care issues, food insecurity, and unstable housing.
This requires health care providers to build a system to identify those in need and then prioritize education, incentives, and encouragement with rigor and determination.
- Digital communication
Make it as easy as possible for patients to communicate with health care professionals, schedule appointments, and get prescription renewals right from their smartphone. At this point, digital communication is a no-brainer. But still, many providers don’t have digital communication systems implemented or in widespread use. Having a direct line of communication with your care team is incredibly empowering for patients. Plus, it is extremely convenient for patients to access basic care services and request referrals. For me, having to make a phone call and make a visit in person to get simple things like a prescription renewal or referral is a huge deterrent to timely care.
Removing barriers to care won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight, but by having a consumer-driven health mindset, we can make health care more equitable. Whatever we can do to make health care more accessible for the patient, we should do it. Period.
Photo: wenmei Zhou, Getty Images
