U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently stated, “I think we'd have a revolution if anyone tried to go backwards on [telehealth]… This is now I think an embedded part of our health care system."

The potential for telehealth is endless: protection during a pandemic, meeting the needs of rural communities, connecting patients with expert specialists or simply assuaging a nervous parent’s fears in the middle of the night. While telehealth cannot replace many critical (and even minor) services, it can help people receive supplementary care and deepen their relationship with their provider.

The patient consumer experience must be a priority
Consumers today expect to have digital service options from the organizations they interact with, and yet healthcare continues to lag behind other industries. As stakeholders continue to evaluate the future of healthcare, the industry has to acknowledge where it has failed to make accessing healthcare easy for consumers.

While healthcare providers don’t need to compete with the latest apps or retail experiences, they can borrow from the standard practices that consumers have come to expect – especially those that make it easier to access healthcare from a distance.
- Some of the tools providers can implement to improve the experience for their patients include:
Secure, private communications via telehealth, messages and chat
- Self-service portals that make it easy to perform simple tasks like accessing records, making payments and managing prescriptions

It should be easy to understand and pay bills
Most of the current dissatisfaction with the healthcare system stems from rising costs – and the convoluted billing and payment systems patients have to navigate. Even among insured adults, a majority who recently had a major medical bill experienced higher-than-expected charges, confusing statements and/or “surprise” bills.

Billing practices that aren’t consumer-friendly will only increase frustration with the current health insurance model, leading to dissatisfaction both with the provider and the system.

While providers cannot control how health insurers bill, they can implement steps to simplify direct patient costs:
-Sending patients a simplified statement that consolidates all of an individual’s or a family’s explanations of benefits (EOBs) and medical bills from that provider and/or organization for an entire month
-Work with networks to provide bundled payments – an all-inclusive, flat-rate payment for common procedures

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