Why is healthcare so awful to interact with?
Why is no one responsible for my experience?
Why does it not matter to them that they lost my business?
Why do they put so many barriers up to becoming a patient?

TL;DR: My wife went in for a routine visit and procedure. What ensued was a calamity of poor experiences, all of which are far too common in today’s healthcare system. And what’s worse, they’re constantly excused or dismissed by a pervasive mindset that we are intrinsically exempt from any sort of standards for “consumer experience” (Think I’m exaggerating? Google “patients are not customers” and prepare to explain why you’re yelling at your computer). For me, this recent patient experience (by proxy) encapsulates what I see as a growing hatred of healthcare among patients.

K.I.S.S.: A digital strategy is NOT brain surgery, and don't let anyone convince you otherwise (even if your Chief Digital Officer happens to be a Neurosurgeon). In my experience, most health systems are laboring over this process, taking months or years to powerpoint the "perfect" digital strategy, build an investment plan and participate in bleeding edge technology. IMHO, this is all a ludicrous waste of time... at least until you've done the basics really, really well first.

For this week’s entry, instead of speculating on the possibilities of wellness-focused medical visit, I’m going to test my hypothesis by building a prototype. Like most prototypes, this one is definitely released too early, with obvious flaws and opportunities for improvement. But as the Reid Hoffman quote goes, “if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

For today’s entry, I’m going to take a slightly different approach and share and review a very provocative idea espoused by a thoughtful health care innovator and colleague. Dr. Zeev Neuwirth serves as the Senior Medical Director for Population Health at Atrium Health (formerly the Carolinas HealthCare System) and recently authored Reframing Healthcare, a fantastic read that elegantly blends a design, marketing and operations reimagination of major aspects of healthcare.

I complained earlier in this exploration of wellness about the missed opportunity for primary care providers (PCPs) to not only engage with, but lead on wellness programming for their patients. It’s not that I’m ignorant of the abundance of wellness programming already live in the market. The problem from my vantage point is that the majority of programming is sponsored and deployed by employers that come with far too many shortcomings, some inherent (i.e., poor uptake and limited accountability) and others that appear to be misguided design (i.e., overly ambitious goals or insufficient scope).

If you haven’t heard of the game “two truths and a lie”, it’s a fun ice breaker where people introduce themselves with three statements and others have to guess which two are true and which one is the lie. Think of it like a 5th grade pop quiz: Which of the following statements is NOT true? I think people who love the game (like I do) appreciate the mischief of a) being able to tell outrageous truths to strangers and b) challenging stereotypes and dispelling ‘conventional wisdom’.

I recently made an appointment for a “wellness check-up” — an annual physical exam with a primary care physician (PCP). According to the healthcare industry, I’m in relatively good health and considered ‘low-risk’: I’m in my 30s, I don’t have hypertension, diabetes, heart disease or any major or minor health condition and I don’t take any medications. In fact, the only official diagnosis I’ve ever received was a self-resolving ‘jumpers’ knee’ (patellar tendinitis) as a teenager. As a physician, I know that I’ve been pretty blessed, and I should savor this clean bill of health as long as I possibly can.