The healthcare industry provides us care in our times of need, but it’s not necessarily known for its ease of use. In fact, despite living in a modern consumer world where car rides, flights, or even a plumber can be booked with a few clicks on your phone, it’s still exceedingly challenging to find a new doctor, see their availability, and book an appointment online. If healthcare draws the most intelligent, caring, and hard-working people in the world, why is it so far behind other industries in meeting these basic consumer expectations? Although people often cite complexity and technology, the honest answer is incentives: healthcare providers don’t compete on patient experience. However, a recent Harris poll showed that over 70% of Americans feel the healthcare system has failed them, so we must try something different.
For health systems to make the needed investments in patient experience, they must see meaningful financial returns. That means more patients must choose them for the high-revenue surgeries and procedures that fund the majority of health system revenues. To engender this type of loyalty, consumers need to be more than just patients; they need to be members. Although the healthcare industry is not new to membership--whether it’s health plans, ACOs, Medicare Advantage, direct-to-employer plans, or concierge care the reality is few patients even know they are members, and even fewer feel that their membership grants them any advantage. Compare that with premier industry-shifting memberships like Amazon Prime or Costco, where over a hundred million members think they’re getting an incredible deal and happily pay more for advantages, such as free delivery and unlimited returns.
So, what would a similarly valuable membership in healthcare look like? Creating innovative and ground-breaking membership programs within health systems may take different forms, but they must accomplish three key goals.
1. Membership features, experience, and tech must be significantly better than the status quo
Today’s healthcare memberships often fail this first test because they’ve been designed by and for administrative goals, not members’ goals. For example, health plans or ACO memberships are typically hyperfocused on ensuring that high-cost members receive prevention and care in lower-cost settings, and that makes sense for plan administrators. But what about the average member? What benefits do they receive for their membership? Do they get special access or help booking an appointment next week? Can they view data on the highest-performing surgeons? Can they shop or compare prices for an upcoming procedure? Provider-sponsored health plans and ACOs have unique data and resources to create and offer better experiences that members would find differentiated and valuable. Still, today, they are largely invisible administrators who simply pay (most of) the bill.
Similarly, designing a premium healthcare membership on top of today’s clunky patient portals seems counterintuitive and counterproductive. Modern memberships like Uber One and Spotify Premium offer streamlined apps that make using your membership features incredibly simple. An industry-shifting healthcare membership will require differentiated tech that complements its differentiated services and experience.
2. Membership must feel like an incredible deal
For decades, concierge care providers have offered privileged access to providers for a monthly or annual fee. In recent years, the advent of direct primary care tweaked this offering to broaden its scale and appeal. However, both struggle with mass appeal because paying thousands a year for quicker access to service that you don’t regularly need is a significant hurdle for most cost-conscious patients. The bad news is there’s no simple way to provide greater access and higher touch service for less than existing players, such as One Medical, which was acquired by Amazon in 2023.
The good news is that health systems may be better positioned to help patients address other major patient pain points in healthcare, such as cost or navigating the complexities of finding appropriate care. A health system that provides membership features like financial protections (i.e., surprise billing protections and transparent cash-pay prices) and data-driven insights (i.e., provider metrics like highest volume or lowest average cost for a given procedure). These features would be unique, valuable, and inherently more scalable and cost-effective than attempts to improve access, which traditionally rely on hiring more providers.
3. Membership must be sticky and create unprecedented patient loyalty
The final goal for healthcare memberships is to inspire a level of loyalty that is largely absent in today’s healthcare industry. Amenities’ internal consumer research shows that most active patients receive care at multiple health systems today. Even amongst patients who self-identify as loyal to one single health system, nearly half split their visits among other non-preferred systems. This means that 1) current patient behavior is very fickle when it comes to receiving services from multiple providers and 2) increasing patient loyalty in this dimension should result in significant improvement in health system revenues. But why have current health system memberships been unsuccessful in achieving this goal? Again, it comes down to incentives: today’s memberships don’t reward patients for their loyalty. However, a membership with financial protections and price transparency features would incentivize patients to stay in the network, specifically for the highest cost (and revenue) procedures and surgeries.
Unlock the Power of Memberships for Your Health System
In today’s competitive landscape, forward-looking healthcare systems increasingly turn to Amenities Health's turnkey membership packages to develop
novel membership models that help health systems distinguish themselves in a competitive market, attract high-value patients, and drive significant revenue growth. Moreover, they allow patients to enjoy a more personalized, convenient, and transparent healthcare experience while providers benefit from increased patient loyalty and revenue growth.
Amenities works with health system partners to conduct local market research, which can be used to help design a membership program tailored to their specific needs and market. By doing so, health systems can understand the key offerings and considerations that will lead to long-term success and meaningfully impact patients’ lives.
Begin your journey toward increasing brand loyalty and driving substantial revenue growth. Discover how Amenities’ turnkey membership packages can further differentiate your health system and help you create a more connected and loyal patient community.