How Millennials are reshaping the Healthcare Industry
Representing a quarter of the world’s population, millennials have vastly different views on health when compared to their parents and grandparents. Born between 1984 and 1995, these digital natives now account for the biggest age group in America and are set to reshape the economy, including the $3 trillion healthcare industry.
Unfortunately, many healthcare providers still continue to cling to traditional means of delivering services, especially ones that are rejected by most millennials. The industry lags in terms of providing improved customer services and driving innovation. Soon, such organizations will have no choice other than developing better relationships with their customers or risk falling behind.
In this blog, we take a look at how millennials are reshaping the healthcare industry.
Desire for Online Health Services
Millennials are strong believers in telehealth, a process that refers to the use of communication technology to deliver healthcare services online. It allows physicians to treat their patients without physically seeing them. This concept has gained steady momentum over the last decade. In fact, 74% of millennials showed interest in utilizing telehealth services with 63% believing it would provide better diagnosis capabilities.
Healthcare providers that are keen on capitalizing on such trends have already taken measures including the implementation of high-quality internet services, HD webcams, and personalized messaging options.
Use of Smartphones
Similar to telehealth, the use of smartphones for accessing healthcare services is referred to as “Mobile Health”. Millennials value convenience over all others and are more likely to visit an acute care center rather than seeing a doctor. Many healthcare organizations have now shifted their focus to establishing communication channels through the mobile.
Smartphones have become a need for millennials. They use it to research, communicate, shop, and rely on it to get answers to most of their problems. With almost 9 in every 10 millennial owning a smartphone, an emphasis has been placed on developing mobile health applications. Developing such apps has presented healthcare providers the opportunity to connect and improve engagement with the newer generation.
Millennials are open and ready for such a change. A study conducted by Salesforce revealed that 71% of millennials hoped their healthcare providers would create apps allowing customers to share health data, book appointments, and view other services. Such a trend will continue to rise as millennials get older. Healthcare providers would do well to seize this opportunity to expand their customer base and improve the overall customer experience.
A Lack of Trust
Let’s not forget that millennials are the generation that had to face crippling student loan debt, financial crisis, political turmoil, and the controversial U.S elections. They have a difficult time trusting traditional institutions which also includes healthcare. According to a study carried out by the Greyhealth Group, 42% of Millennials stated that they don’t trust their doctors.
Millennials are skeptical of drug prescriptions and are more than likely to conduct research online and read others opinions. Often, the opinion of fellow customers is given equal importance to those of physicians. Healthcare organizations that seek to retain customers must strive to develop relationships built on trust.
The High Costs of Healthcare
Cost-effective treatments are a high priority for this younger generation. They view routine healthcare services as too expensive and half of them admit to not visiting doctors just to save money. Millennials would rather prefer purchasing health insurance plans that come with low premium costs.
The obvious answer would be to lower costs, but the solution is far more complex. In addition to improving quality, healthcare organizations need to increase the value of their offerings. Millennials need to be convinced that the services they are purchasing are worth the money. Being transparent and straightforward regarding your billing structure is also equally important.
Social Media
Social media remained largely untouched by healthcare organizations mainly due to industrial regulations set by HIPPA aimed at protecting patient privacy. However, due to increasing patient popularity and dependency on the platforms, using it has become a necessity.
The role social media plays for healthcare is one that is evolving and still not yet fully understood. Despite that, it does provide a number of benefits such as educating the public, connecting individuals, and empowering patients. In spite of its drawbacks, social media is used to determine the credibility of physicians, doctors, and the services they provide.
Social media platforms also allow users to post reviews for everyone to see. It acts as a digital word-of-mouth service that millennials use to judge whether a provider’s services are worth utilizing or not and helps them make informed purchase decisions. Around 76% of millennials give importance to online reviews posted by other patients before deciding to visit the physician or not.
Although the social media platform does allow for free marketing and consumer interactions, healthcare organizations must be quick to respond to negative reviews and address customer concerns.
Healthcare organizations must adapt to such changes or be left behind by the competition. Medical Consulting Associates is a medical recruitment agency in New Jersey that helps healthcare providers find suitable candidates. Contact them today for more information.
