If you’re an Amazon customer, you may have already been introduced to Amazon’s One Medical services, which provides 24/7 virtual care, on-demand video chat, and an in-app pharmacy offering popular prescriptions at often deeply discounted prices.

With constant accessibility, multi-channel patient outreach options and an online pharmacy, Amazon’s model is what consumers have come to expect not only from them but from e-commerce in general. And by disrupting the healthcare industry with the often dizzying offerings of centralized in-app features, this should send a clear message to the healthcare industry: service—based on convenience, better communication, and streamlined coordination—sells. 

Patient engagement and customer service are what people expect from their healthcare providers. “More than ever before, consumers are paying increased attention to their healthcare options and selecting products and services they prefer to consume,” says Debra Richman, Senior Vice President of Healthcare Business Development & Strategy at Harris Interactive. “As a result, positive brand recognition has become and will increasingly be critically important.”

Leading healthcare organizations understand that positive patient experiences rely on data to understand their patients, and they utilize this information in ways that simplify the onboarding and referral process, provide a comprehensive patient profile for the healthcare provider to deliver personalized care, and empower customer support teams with information to extend meaningful services. 

The last thing a sick patient wants to do when unwell is endure long wait times, redundant questions, and face piles of paperwork with each office visit. With cloud-based technology, patients can gleefully give up their roles as messenger, file clerk, and lab results courier and focus on getting well. 

Let’s talk about the power of leveraging data to create a patient-centered brand and how Amazon’s One Medical Services illustrates the impact that a convenient, communicative, and coordinated care service process has on healthcare. 

Convenience 

Consumers like choices. And offering digital properties, such as self-service portals, online appointment scheduling, tools to reorder medical supplies, and easy connections to a live customer support rep–all from the patient’s mobile device–is undeniably the future of patient care. 

With an expanding expectation for mobile phone access to medical services, research shows that “more than 60 percent of consumers expect to be able to change or schedule a healthcare appointment, check medical records and test results, and renew a medication online.”

This innovative, patient-centric step toward convenience requires improved data interpretation and accessibility. A system based on centralized data prepares your support team for more aligned coordination within the organization’s infrastructure and services partners.  

Coordination

By design, healthcare is a coordinated effort among providers, payers, and patient support teams. Many healthcare providers understand that customer engagement relies on knowing the customer. But as Alyssa Halcomb, a Salesforce Healthcare and Life Sciences expert, explains, the buck can’t start and stop in the exam room. “Everyone involved in the care journey needs to be just as connected to the patient.” 

Nevertheless, the pathway to care often depends on the patient collecting information from different providers regarding referrals, diagnoses, lab results, treatment plans, medications, payments, etc.  

Healthcare shouldn’t require the patient to coordinate their own services. Yet siloed processes among providers and care services teams still place the patient in that role. Centralized data with secured access among care delivery teams is changing this process. 

Centralized data helps improve care coordination between different providers and care settings. For example, if a patient sees multiple specialists or receives care at various facilities, their health information can be accessed and shared among their providers. This can help ensure that everyone involved in the patient’s care has the most up-to-date information and can make informed decisions.

An experienced advisory team can implement digital transformation that aligns with the need for cost-saving processes while also satisfying the evolving expectations of your patients and care partners. Meaningful automation, industry-specific tools and capabilities can potentially work with existing systems to deliver a customized, enhanced system that adds value to data. 

Better data access means your organization can standardize processes that meet patient needs and expectations while streamlining work processes among departments, clinics, and partners.  

Finally, data-supported, standardized care also helps providers identify unnecessary expenditures, ensure valued resources are targeting areas that present the greatest need for specialized care, and stamp out inefficiencies in reimbursements, for instance, with strategic data-supported decisions to better manage all points of patient care at a quality level and cost that expedites reimbursement. 

Communication

With One Medical Services, Amazon is listening to what its customers want: an application that places them in control of their care. Based on the patient’s preference, providers can use secure messaging to send reminders, answer questions, and provide updates on test results or treatment plans from a central location. This improves patient engagement by fostering a sense of connection and communication between patients and their healthcare providers.

Communication is the root of personalized care. By analyzing a patient’s health information, healthcare providers can identify patterns and trends to design personalized treatment plans. This can help patients become more engaged in their own care as they see the benefits of personalized treatment plans that are tailored to their specific needs and health goals.

“People expect a better experience from their healthcare provider—One that parallels what they receive from consumer brands like CVS or Amazon.” says Halcomb. “Through investing in more agile healthcare platform technologies that incorporate automation and work with live data, providers can deliver an efficient experience that patients have come to expect.” 

Amid this rapidly changing healthcare industry, one element remains constant: focus on service. With an upgraded system, your organization can offer a positive patient experience based on convenience, seamless cost-saving coordination among care providers, and meaningful, personalized communication that builds trust and patient loyalty.