Executive Vice President of CVS Health and President of CVS Pharmacy Helena Foulkes spoke Tuesday on how technology can — and can't — help reach today's increasingly independent healthcare consumer in a roundtable discussion at the 2015 Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., Fortune reported.
"Consumers have a lot more skin in the game than they did a year ago," Ms. Foulkes said at the conference. She also said she believes consumers care more about their finances than their health, according to the report. In light of this trend, consumers need more easily accessible cost information to help them make decisions, especially when they might spend anywhere from $600 to $6,000 on a colonoscopy out of pocket, she said.
Ms. Foulkes also noted that CVS is looking to meet one of physician's chief complaints: helping patients take medicines as prescribed. "We should allow consumers to text us if they want to refill their prescriptions, or ping them on their phones to remind them to take their medication," she said, according to the report.
However, she also acknowledged one place technology may not be able to reach today's healthcare consumer: social media. "I think we are still early in social networking on healthcare, and the average people we serve in stores are not connected to social networking from a healthcare perspective," Ms. Foulkes said, according to Fortune.
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