Frailty, Thy Name is Non-Transparency
February 23rd, 2007 by supportTransparency. Everywhere you look, you can see it - well actually, you can see through it. The point is, it is a buzzword that has a lot of traction in any industry that is bounded by trust. It’s especially important to marketers and is the hallmark of various channels of social media. If a company makes a misstep with regard to transparency (see Wal-Mart, Sony, Microsoft) they will be discovered and exposed.
We’re currently working with a client in a sector of the healthcare industry - an industry that is increasingly concerned with transparency. Transparency for patients, providers and payers alike. The vision for the future of healthcare is a system in which patients, increasingly responsible for a higher percentage of their payment, will actually know what healthcare services will cost, will be able to compare quality data of physicians, and will be able to make choices accordingly.
Similarly, providers will have real-time knowledge of how much they can expect to be reimbursed for services and will be able to plan accordingly; they’ll also be able to judge the quality of care they provide as compared to their peers.
It is therefore refreshing to see someone like Paul Levy, CEO of Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center, start his own blog, Running a Hospital. He has a strong point of view about the role of a hospital when it comes to transparency. In a story in today’s Boston Globe, Blog tests hospital leaders’ patience, Levy is running afoul of some of his hospital’s executives with his decision to publish - on his blog - the rates of hospital-acquired infections.
With the number of medical procedures and the number of medical-related deaths rising in the last 5 years, patients are more concerned than ever about understanding and weighing the risks. Levy is right to push for more transparency at his hospital and it’s refreshing to see him back it up on his own blog. It should be a matter of time before his peers are pressured into doing the same.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Hospitals are not going to be immune from the popular corporate blogging mantra “They’re going to be talking about you anyway, you might as well take part in the conversation.” In fact, we’re seeing companies start to crop up in order to facilitate this conversation. Take Cambridge-based PatientsLikeMe, for example. It is a platform for ALS patients (more diseases coming soon) to connect about their treatments, side effects, and other experiences.
Basically, if hospitals don’t start publishing this data on their own, people are going to start writing about their experiences—and people usually tend to write about bad experiences. Those interested in finding out this information are going to search and probably not like what they see—and go with your competitor. It’s better to just be clear up front.
March 20th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Adam - great points. I think the reason that hospitals are so far behind on this is because they have always considered themselves immune from competition. The way so many healthcare network contracts have been written, patients have traditionally had no choice.
But the times are changing and the era of consumer-driven healthcare is beginning to dawn. Today we have more control over our healthcare dollars (in addition to being on the hook for a larger portion of the deductible, co-pay and premium) through a variety of health savings accounts. The next step is the widespread availability of institutional data, followed quickly by the availability of quality-of-care statistics about providers and more insight into the prices they command.