Nearly half of millennials say they have no personal relationship with their primary care physicians, but they are interested in communicating through mobile apps and wearable devices.
A study from Salesforce polled 1,700 insured individuals with established primary care physicians. Approximately 40 percent of millennial-aged respondents ages 18 to 34 said they thought their primary care physicians would not recognize them if they passed on the street, and 60 percent of millennial respondents supported the use of telehealth options to eliminate in-person appointments.
However, 71 percent of millennial respondents also replied that they would be more interested in engaging with a primary care physician if a provider offered a mobile app to manage their health records, preventative care and schedule appointments. Additionally, 63 percent said they would proactively provide health data from Wifi-enabled wearable devices to monitor their health, according to a news release.
"This report vividly illustrates that our increasingly wired populace wants more useful data, more connections with their physicians and more intuitive ways to access high quality healthcare," said Robert Wachter, MD, professor of medicine, University of California, San Francisco, in the news release. "In our $3 trillion health economy, there is a bounty waiting for the companies that figure out how to meet these needs."