5/1/12

Happy hour, patient style

Cocktail napkin with quote
art and photo by C. Kraft

4 comments:

  1. And what do you have in mind, for a reassurance plan?

    I suspect it's a plan (analogous to INsurance) that REassures the patient and family. Of what?

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  2. Hi, Dave, thanks for posing the essential question.

    Reassurance, to me, looks and feels more like a relationship than transaction, though service would be primary.

    Reassurance is different from "the customer's always right" approach, because it would grow out of a certain feeling of "partnership" embedded into it at the core.

    My sense is that insurance companies all over the country are wrestling with how to sell and market their insurance products with improved service and lower costs.

    But imagine what could happen if instead of making an incremental improvement, a new products team took time to study what customers felt was "reassuring", figured out how to provide it, and introduced it to the market.

    Being sick or injured would still hurt. But the feeling of care and compassion conveyed by a reassurance policy would make a difference. Call it purpose-driven health care product design.

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    Replies
    1. +! thought - Paul Grundy, MD and his work with the Patient Centered Medical Home approaches this ideal.

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  3. My sense is that capitalist market forces tend to crowd out care and compassion. Although such sentiments may not be antithetical to profit-driven insurance companies, I don't believe they are particularly well aligned.

    I would feel much more reassured if health care were treated as a right - as it is in most other western industrialized countries - rather than a privilege. As in so many realms of public discourse, conservative market fundamentalists have succeeded in commandeering the narrative, so I don't anticipate any serious consideration of significant reform, at least not for another few election cycles.

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