Revamp Your Healthcare Thinking to Compete with Retail Disruptors

“Younger consumers’ healthcare preferences are significantly different than that of older consumers. Urgent care providers have a prime opportunity to meet the needs of Gen Z and Millennials by creating a new healthcare experience.”

As the healthcare industry has remained relatively unchanged in terms of providers since the implementation of the primary care physician (PCP), we are entering an era where the family doctor’s office is facing new competition. The opponents? Urgent care facilities and retail clinics (such as CVS Minute Clinics and Walgreens Healthcare Clinics). As insurance restrictions and strict business practices are at the helm of consumer’s healthcare choices, PCPs have been positioned as the gateway to medical treatment in the U.S. – but not for long. When we asked which kind of provider was their “first thought for healthcare”, only slightly more than half of healthcare decision makers (53%) named a PCP. With younger consumers now in the position to make personal healthcare choices, will they prefer new provider options, reducing traditional PCPs’ relevance? 

To grasp how healthcare preferences could change, we compared the ways in which 2,600 consumers between the ages of 18 and 80 use—and evaluate—three different kinds of everyday healthcare providers: retail clinics, urgent care facilities, and doctor’s offices, including PCPs, general practitioners and family doctors. In our study, “healthcare services” refers to medical care for the routine maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical illnesses. 

We started this evaluation by directly asking our respondents why they prefer visiting a PCP and found that two of the main reasons lie in quality & familiarity. Consumers like to know that they are understood on a personal level while receiving quality care, and having a PCP provides that comfort. Additionally, consumers are concerned about getting the best bang for their buck. If the service is covered by their insurance, it is likely that it will hold a heavy weight in their decision-making process.

In terms of actual provider preference, 85% of respondents said that they considered visiting a PCP for healthcare services in the past six months. It is important to recognize, though, that the number of PCP offices in the United States is exponentially higher than the amount of their competitor facilities.  In 2010, there were 246,000 PCPs in America.¹ Currently, there are only 7,600 urgent care clinics² and only 3,000 retail clinics.³ 42% of respondents had thought about visiting an urgent care facility, and only 18% considered a retail clinic. Despite these lower numbers, retail clinics have almost as high of a return rate (46%) as PCPs (59%).

To gain a deeper understanding of these preferences, we broke our respondents down by generation. As expected, we found age-related fault lines; older patients prefer the familiarity of a PCP on account of complex medical histories, where younger consumers are more likely to not have established a PCP at all. This is where we see the potential for PCP loyalty to fade simply based upon the fact that younger consumers care more about convenience, speed, and ease of access rather than maintaining provider relationships. 

In the end, the message is simple: the younger you are, the less likely to are to visit a PCP. Younger consumers are more likely to be swayed by convenient alternatives and, to put it bluntly, older patients eventually die and replacing them is essential. This, in turn, makes us wonder what can be done at each of these facilities to ensure they will be sustainable in the future. 

Our projected opportunities?

• Primary care physicians: Step up your access; put the consumer first, and add new services 
• Urgent care: Improve familiarity, extend your services
• Retail clinics: Improve real and perceived quality and efficiency

In addition to these recommendations, we also wanted to know what consumers specifically want to see these providers implement in the future. Our results showed that they want to see a shift in environment, changing their healthcare experience to mimic those in retail and hospitality settings. They reject the idea of feeling like patients and want to be welcomed into a comfortable space that is ultimately more efficient, high tech, and high touch.

All in all, providers that succeed will borrow from each other’s strengths to create entirely new and innovative ecosystems of health. To do this, though, they need to consider fundamental changes to satisfy these evolving consumer needs. 

For more info on WD Partners’ approach to health & wellness experiences, click here.
 

Dan Stanek is an innovator, strategist and leader with over 30 years of experience in consumer marketing and customer experience innovation for Fortune 500 companies. Dan works with clients to develop innovative new concepts and optimize customer experiences in the Health & Wellness sector.
 

WD's mission is to shape the future of customer experience. Our passion is to solve our clients' challenges and anticipate their future needs. We take pride in being on the forefront of retail disruption. WD's integrated services include: strategy & insights, brand & design, A & E and construction services.