MGMA17 Day 1 – Drawing Inspiration from Consumer Experience

Last night, attendees celebrated the opening of the Medical Group Management Association’s annual conference (MGMA17) in Anaheim CA with a block party that featured local food trucks instead of traditional food-stations. This welcome twist allowed attendees to sample small portions from several vendors.

The block party was a reflection of the exhibitor reception that happened earlier in the evening. With just 90 minutes, attendees could only sample a small portion of the 300 vendors that filled two halls in the Anaheim Convention Center. Despite that short amount of time, a key theme emerged – consumer experiences are serving as inspiration for HealthIT companies.

Ken Comée, CEO of CareCloud, summed it up this way: “Patients have high expectations from their healthcare providers now. They want the same level of service and convenience that they get from Amazon, Uber, OpenTable and banks.”

Prominently featured in the CareCloud booth was Breeze – a recently announced platform developed in partnership with First Data (see this blog post for more details). Comée had this to say about their new platform “If I had to compare Breeze to a consumer experience, I would have to say that it is most similar to checking in for a flight. Very few people check in for their flight in-person at the airport anymore. Almost everyone checks in at home on their computer or via their phone well ahead of their flight. You fill in all the relevant information online and you just show up to the airport and go where you need to go. There’s no paperwork you have to fill out, no need to arrive early…it’s just a smooth seamless experience. Armed with Breeze, our clients can now offer that same airline check-in experience with new as well as returning patients.”

A few booths over, David Rodriguez founder of NextPatient, talked about how OpenTable was one of the inspirations for their online appointment-booking platform. “In today’s world, when a person arrives at the website of a restaurant, they want to be able to see the times when they can make a reservation and they want to be able to click the time they want, fill in no more than 2 or 3 key pieces of information and lock it in. That’s what we offer physician practices – an elegant way to allow patients to click and book an appointment right from the practice’s own website without complex coding.”

Calibrater Health, a company that texts surveys to patients after a visit and creates “tickets” for any responses with a low NPS, was inspired by ZenDesk. Though not technically a consumer-facing application, ZenDesk does help companies forge and manage relationships with end-users by streamlining customer-service workflows, something Calibrater brings to its clients.

Patient engagement vendor, Relatient, drew inspiration from salon experiences. For many years it has been common practice in the salon and spa industries to send customers friendly reminders of their upcoming appointments via voice, text and email. Not only did these reminders reduce no-shows, but they also helped to improve customer loyalty. The Relatient solution brings those same benefits to healthcare organizations.

The night’s most thoughtful story of consumer inspiration came from Aaron Glauser, Senior Director of Product Marketing at AdvancedMD. “If I had to pick a consumer experience that inspires me and that we are closest to, it’d have to be Amazon. When you search Amazon for a product, a lot of matching entries come up – just like searching online for a doctor. You then narrow the search by looking at the star ratings and the reviews. Once you decide on a product, you click in and you decide how, when and where you want it delivered. That’s how patients want to book appointments. With AdvancedMD they can choose an open appointment time and they can even opt for a telemedicine appointment. That’s analogous to whether I want the physical book or the Kindle version on Amazon. Then as a user I get to choose how I want to pay for my Amazon purchase – which we can offer through AdvancedMD.”

Whether its Amazon, Zendesk, OpenTable, a salon or an airline that has served as inspiration. What was made clear on Day 1 of MGMA17’s exhibit hall is that consumer-experiences have become an important factor in the design of HealthIT solutions…and healthcare will be better for it.

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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