Access Will Be Profitable — If Health Care Movers and Shakers Are Right
Retail providers are expanding, and health insurers are profiting, but timely access to needed care remains elusive for many.
// By Lindsay R. Resnick, MHA //
Assuring timely access to care — an individual’s ability to obtain health care services — has always challenged payers, providers, and without doubt, consumers. The industry’s constant back-and-forth blame game over cost and access must end. Customers are listening, and so are competitors.
Recent market moves are making care more widely available than ever before. Billions upon billions of dollars are being invested in products and services that promise expanded access. The combination of retail clinics, telemedicine, homecare, digital health, and public/private insurance options has opened the access floodgates for many Americans. But access continues to be problematic. The thinking is that if you build it, they will come. But can they?
With a rapidly expanding set of new community-based retail health outlets, integration, and alignment with competitive “frenemies” is critical. The pace, number, and size of transactions won’t let up anytime soon. Uncertainty and volatility will continue while markets are disrupted, and competitors disintermediated. This requires new thinking, new structures, and new strategies to keep up, grow, and be profitable.
As the national debate on economic priorities and health care for all continues, industry insiders, policy experts, media pundits, and political partisans will stake out a diverse range of policy positions.
Regardless, payers and providers must be laser focused on consumer access to care, or consumers will look elsewhere. Once there’s a retention problem, retroactively trying to keep customers from leaving isn’t the answer.