3 Ways To Improve Healthcare For Millennials

In almost everything they do in their day-to-day lives, millennials, those reaching adulthood in the early 21st century, look for things that will work seamlessly.

They order pizza on their phone, switch to sharing photos on Instagram, and then flip to their favorite tutorial on YouTube. In contrast, waiting around for an hour or more at the doctor’s office just to be shuffled into another room before seeing the actual doctor, feels antiquated and unnecessary. If it isn’t seamless, millennials are more likely to defer, or completely put off, getting the care they need.

One visit to a doctor requires time off from work. They have to get to and from the doctor’s office. There’s all that waiting around and then a co-pay. And that’s only the first stop if they also have to take their paper prescription up the street to the drug store and wait some more. And that’s if they even have a primary care doc in the first place — which many of the 80 million millennials in the US don’t.

People can get all the information they need these days within seconds, so millennials believe that nothing should take all day. Especially something as important as healthcare. And yet, take a look around and witness the difference between how healthcare is delivered today to millennials, versus nearly every other commercial encounter in their lives.

Millennials want to be able to go from worry to care all within the four corners of their phone. According to a study by Kantar Health, millennials are less likely to trust physicians and far more inclined to consult online experts and other informal sources.

This generation expects simplicity, convenience, and immediate answers from everything else in their lives, but most get the opposite when it comes to their healthcare.

With an ethos more attuned to a new generation of young adults, there are several ways the healthcare industry can make the experience easier for millennials and bring more of them into the fold without sacrificing quality of care.

Millennials want convenience.

The first thing millennials will do when they have a question about anything is check their phone — whether that’s using Google, emailing a professor or friend, or checking their regular Facebook group message.

Some healthcare companies have tapped into this already. For example, ZocDoc — a popular go-to source for care among millennials — matches users to a primary care physician and allows everything from that initial connection to actually making an appointment to be done online at the user’s convenience. An on-demand, responsible solution “within the four corners of their phone.”

Think about the alternative to ZocDoc in the eyes of most young people. Spending time navigating their insurance company’s website and directory to find an “in-network” physician near them, waiting for regular office hours to call the doc’s office and then trying to get an appointment that fits their schedule. When’s the last time a millennial you know stopped to make a phone call to schedule anything?

They may also find out the doctor isn’t currently taking new patients or that their insurance policy requires a referral or visit with a “gatekeeper” before actually getting the care they need. Does that align with anything a millennial is doing in any other aspect of their daily lives? It’s no wonder Google, Amazon, and Apple are all exploring ways to get involved in healthcare.

The current healthcare industry isn’t intuitive and serves up obstacles that feel like “friction” for young people seeking care. “Care” is a product as much as anything else today and “patients” should be viewed as precious “customers” if we’re going to improve health outcomes. The way care is delivered today is, in many respects, the antithesis of nearly every other online encounter, transaction, and experience young adults have grown accustomed to outside of healthcare.

Like Jeff Bezos notes in this year’s letter to Amazon shareholders, “In only a few seconds and with a couple taps on their phones, customers can read reviews, compare prices from multiple retailers, see whether something’s in stock, find out how fast it will ship or be available for pick-up, and more… It’s the kind of customer empowerment that is happening across all industries.”

Healthcare is no exception.

Services like ZocDoc remove some of the barriers to healthcare for millennials. First and foremost, it centralizes itself in the first place young people look for answers, and then seeks to make connecting them with a doctor as simple as possible. “Frictionless.” They can ask their question, get matched with a doctor, and make an appointment without leaving the app. ZocDoc found a way to offer consumer “delight” in an industry not often associated with much joy. It actually sounds like a page from the Amazon playbook.

And making healthcare “convenient” isn’t about subscribing to some ridiculous notion that the millennial generation is lazy and therefore MUST have convenience over all else. It’s actually about communicating with young adults where they already are, removing unnecessary barriers and red tape, and enabling an experience that has become second nature in nearly every other corner of their lives today EXCEPT healthcare.

Millennials want privacy.

Despite the trend of sharing every personal moment on social media, young adults are very protective of certain areas of sensitive information. The relationship they have with their phone is as private as any other they have with a person. They want to control who sees what and how that information is likely to be stored, protected and used. Try “borrowing” a millennial’s phone for a quick peak and you understand how special that relationship actually is.

To successfully bring healthcare to mobile, young adults need to know, first and foremost, that the encounter will be private. And not just “private” in the sense of “free from third-party advertising.” Private in the sense of encryption, true de-identification, and even anonymity, if possible. Healthcare conversations, records, and transactions must be private, protected, and under their unique control. But it also means the mobile experience must be discrete, and this discretion must be made explicit in word and deed from first click to last.

Maybe they’re still on their parents’ insurance. American millennials are the least likely to enroll in health insurance benefits through work, according to a 2016 report from the ADP Research Institute and they can stay on their parents’ insurance through the Affordable Care Act. This has implications that may be non-obvious to those hoping to deliver care online.

They also may still live at home — 15% of American millennials do. And they likely don’t want test results or a testing kit for a potential sexually-transmitted infection (STI), as one example, sent to their home where their parents will know their business. The goal and the need is to deliver broader options and better solutions than what traditional healthcare workflows provide today. Doing this right means seeing the world through the eyes of the consumer, not the CEO, investor, or some prescribed business mandate.

Allowing for testing or collection kits to be sent to decentralized locations (such as a dorm, an Amazon Locker, or their home), or introducing point-of-care solutions for testing at retail clinics may knock down some barriers to discrete, convenient healthcare for millennials. In the case of STI testing, decentralized approaches may avoid potential conflict with parents, which could encourage more young people to embrace screening where and when they need it most. Putting privacy and discretion first fosters trust, removes barriers to testing, and encourages millennials to get treatment without fear of judgment or shame.

Solve for discretion and convenience and you’ve got an environment more tailored to millennial expectations for modern healthcare.

Millennials demand choice.

Millennials are used to making decisions for themselves in just about everything. Whether this is their preference for guacamole on a burrito, extra caramel drizzle on their macchiato, or setting up auto bill pay for their car payment.

Contrast this with today’s paternalistic healthcare system where others make decisions for them and you start to understand how healthcare is lagging nearly every other vertical in the market today when it comes to customer expectations.

A millennial-friendly healthcare system will move away from making all the decisions for the patient and allow them to have a say. It will move from a system of paternalism and gatekeepers to one where clinicians are advisors but the patient ultimately decides. If a young person wants to be able to control where and when they get their tests, how they pay for it, if it shows up on their insurance, and if they’re more comfortable talking to a doctor by video or chat, there should be ways for them to do that. So long as quality and evidence-based care are assured. And, with today’s technologies, this is entirely achievable.

This doesn’t mean physician judgment is replaced with the patient’s. It just means patients are afforded an environment and encounter that they’re more likely to embrace. One where they feel like their voice matters, where they feel like a real “customer” and, if done right, translates into better health outcomes. In Amazon parlance, consumer “delight.”

It deserves to be said that technology cannot solve everything, nor should it. The best technical solutions will serve to complement existing healthcare paradigms, making them more efficient and way more convenient. The goal for meeting millennial expectations and improving care is to reduce barriers to receiving that care — not replacing it with something else. It’s an opportunity for new tech, new delivery methods, and less bureaucracy to help the current healthcare system feel, to all young adults, less like a chore and more like just another great online experience, which they’ve become accustomed to in every other aspect of their lives.

It just makes sense that if you can bring greater convenience, choice and discretion to healthcare, that those you most want to reach will be much more likely to embrace it.