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A recent survey appearing in Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere, shows that Americans find little satisfaction in the current health care system. The study focused on seven developed countries: Australia, Canada, Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States. In almost all categories, U.S. patients ranked themselves dead last. Americans have the lowest life expectancy, the highest percent of GDP spent on health care, and the highest infant mortality rate of the nations polled.

A whopping 32% of patients have experienced medical mistakes, where as only 16% of Dutch patients said the same. This could be a result of doctors’ complaints about not having access to medical records at the time of service. Only 49% of Americans are able to get an appointment with their physician when they’re ill, whereas 75% of New Zealanders are able to see their doctors when it counts most. Even more revealing, 34% of U.S. patients surveyed say that the health care system needs to be entirely rebuilt.

What can health care providers, including physicians, hospitals, government programs, and insurance companies do to combat this high level of dissatisfaction? Is there something short of a complete overhaul that will improve the health care experience of the average American? Perhaps providers can take a page out of the book of private business, where the ultimate goal is always improving the customer experience. In the few months, Talkibie has reported on some of the high tech solutions that many providers are using to give their patients the best possible care. These new services and technologies could solve some of the user frustrations with our current health care system.

As reported earlier this fall, a Canadian company called Myca has been giving patients access to their doctors through cell phone video conferencing. Canada ranked the lowest of all seven countries when it came to same or next-day appointments with doctors, with the U.S. a close second. The service allows subscribers and doctors to communicate visually through their phones, and conversations can be logged and incorporated into existing medical records. Prescriptions can even be assigned by email. This could be a major help to physicians who suffer from a constant backlog of appointments, and for patients with minor ailments who need medication but do not necessarily need to be seen face-to-face. Providers and patients currently using the service have seized a golden opportunity to streamline the antiquated protocol of our current health care system.

Patients may also turn to alternative online options to increase their satisfaction with the health care system. Microsoft is courting the disgruntled patient with its new HealthVault service, which debuted in October. The idea is that medical records can be stored online and shared with any health care providers who use the service, regardless of whether or not they’re your primary doctor, a specialist, or a surgeon. It’s easy to see how a service of this kind would reduce the rate of medical mistakes due to a lack of access to medical records. And Microsoft is not the only high tech company to offer this service. Google unveiled vague plans to host online medical records, which it says was inspired by the destruction of thousands of patient records during Hurricane Katrina.

The U.S. health care system most definitely needs some changes, and borrowing a few tricks from the internet technology world could potentially solve common problems that affect the patient experience. Innovators in both fields could work together to identify and address the concerns of patients, and by using a problem-solving process that focuses on the needs of the end-user, we just might avoid a total overhaul.

Monday, December 10th, 2007 Both comments and pings are currently closed.

By Haley January Eckels