Patients are increasingly bringing their Amazon-style expectations to healthcare as they shop around for providers that can deliver convenient, quick, and personalized care.

Last year, the average American compared 21 distinct providers before scheduling, according to an analysis from online booking platform Zocdoc. When searching for more sensitive services, such as psychiatry or gynecology, patients vetted even more physicians, researching between 25 and 31 providers.

Providers are under increased pressure to stand out, but patients’ decision calculus is no longer tied solely to quality ratings — they’re evaluating speed of access, convenience, and whether they will have a say in their care plan.

“If you go for coffee, you can tell the barista exactly how to make it. You’re buying this coffee, you want it this way,” said Jonathan Smith, founder of New Jersey-based therapy group Center for Family Wellness. “People now almost want to shop for therapy the same way. They want to be in the driver’s seat about their care.”

In response, providers are pouring resources into understanding and improving the patient experience.

This means “getting outside of how healthcare has historically existed,” said Jen Straub, founder of Pursuit Health Strategy. “We have to really stretch the imagination to figure out how to do things right by the patient. In a world where they've got a million things coming at them, can healthcare become one more thing that they can knock out quickly and efficiently?”

The consumer-first era comes to healthcare

Several trends are now pushing healthcare toward what professional services firm PwC dubs the “consumer-first era.”

For one, Americans are spending more time and money thinking about their health outside of the doctor’s office. The U.S. health and wellness market, including out-of-pocket healthcare spending, has grown to top $2 trillion, and 58% of consumers say they prioritize their health and wellness more than they did a year ago.

Seventy percent of consumers now use health technology at least monthly, according to PwC. As Americans track their health across watches and apps, they’ve begun to view managing their health as an increasingly continuous activity rather than something that happens only during an annual physical.

At the same time, the number of places patients can turn for care has expanded. Telehealth has become a meaningful part of care delivery across specialties, with nearly one-third of neurologists and roughly one-quarter of endocrinologists reporting that more than 20% of their weekly visits take place virtually. Meanwhile, retail clinics, at-home services, and direct-to-consumer digital health platforms offer even more alternatives to the traditional physician's office, particularly for routine and follow-up care.

As patients evaluate those options, it’s natural for them to bring their expectations from other industries, like retail or financial services, which have modernized faster, said Straub.

“After COVID, we really saw how many barriers could be removed. It was possible to move faster, get seen at home, and digitize so much of the healthcare experience. We’d already seen this in banking, where consumers can transfer money on a Saturday night,” she said. “As an industry, we had to ask: how are we creating that same ease?”

Rethinking operations

The first place providers adapted was their marketing. A 2022 study of more than 300 healthcare advertisements found that ads were more likely to emphasize convenience or facility amenities than a physician's experience or training. While the ads stopped short of calling patients "clients" or "customers," healthcare positioning increasingly resembles retail: communicating availability, convenience, personalization, and brand reputation.

But promising convenience is easier than delivering it. Ideally, improving patient experience means optimizing "everything a patient sees," said Lincoln Richards, principal at Albaron Partners. It's a tall order.

“Patient experience starts the second that they land on the website or the second that they pick up the phone. You should be evaluating everything,” said Richards. “Can you offer automated text reminders a week, a day, an hour before an appointment? Is there an efficient and easy check-in process? Is the room set up and prepared for whatever consult you’re going to do?”

Practices can leverage patient feedback and data, like satisfaction scores, appointment attendance, or follow-up visits scheduled, to determine where to start. Each metric can reveal friction at different points in the patient journey, from a cumbersome reminder or rescheduling process to a poor post-visit follow-up.

Across the board, addressing care delays tends to be a high priority, experts said, because wait times can make the difference between a new patient entering your system and going somewhere else. According to McKinsey & Company, 45% of appointments are now booked just 24 to 72 hours in advance, and nearly two-thirds of consumers who encounter what they perceive to be too long a wait choose to get care elsewhere.

Reducing delays requires attacking the problem from both sides: making existing appointments easier to access and creating more capacity. Online scheduling allows patients to book during off-hours without waiting for a callback. Telehealth, extended hours, and same-day appointments can expand when and how patients are seen.

Offering telehealth, where appropriate, can positively impact patient flow, said Richards. One analysis found practices that offered both virtual and in-person care received 35% more bookings than those offering only in-person appointments. A second report has even better news: telehealth patients are less likely to late cancel or no-show.

Straub sees telehealth as a way to further personalize care delivery, giving the example of a working woman seeking fertility services. If she cannot take time off from work, might she be seen virtually? Or could she come in after five o'clock or before 8 a.m.?

“There's just a lot of empowerment when you allow someone to make their own decisions,” Straub said.

But there are limits to how far healthcare can — or should — follow retail's playbook. Smith sees his therapy practice, for example, as the antithesis of large direct-to-consumer therapy platforms. He sees his commitment to clinical quality as his differentiator. He requires all first sessions to be in person and doesn't offer free 15-minute consultations, despite their growing popularity.

“If I’m having a conversation with you on the phone when you’re not officially a patient and we haven’t gotten a consent form signed, ethically I have questions about how much we should be discussing your presenting problems,” Smith said. “If other therapy practices are offering this, it seems like it’s with the goal of selling a service, and they’re moving away from a health model and more toward a retail model. I think you can get yourself into trouble by catering to that more and more, because where do you draw the boundary?”

On that question, Straub draws the line differently.

“We're using technology to remove points of friction, not human interaction or clinical judgment. There is so much in healthcare that does still require empathy, a personal touch and physician expertise,” she said. “We’re taking influence from retail, yes, but we don't want healthcare ever to feel like buying a pair of shoes.”