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The Internet is predicted to have an unprecedented impact on consumer behavior during the next decade. It has already changed forever the way financial markets operate and the pricing of those markets. Its impact is being felt by some healthcare organizations today. Patients are showing up in providers’ offices with reams of medical information they have downloaded from the Internet. For some providers, this has had an unnerving and disquieting effect, as their patients come in with studies and findings of different therapies of which those providers have never heard. For others, it has meant that they have had to
become much more of a partner with their patients, reviewing those studies to identify which merit further exploration or which are inappropriate to that patient. Since some medical information on the web is of questionable value, physicians must assume an educational and collaborative role with their patients to guide them toward the best outcome.

This partnering is just the beginning of the shift toward consumer-driven healthcare. in the future, the Internet will become the conduit for patients to work together with their providers, to critique and praise their providers to others, and to express their demands. In turn healthcare providers will focus on those empowered consumers, changing their practice patterns to meet their patients’ requirements rather than forcing their patients to conform to their routines. The Internet provides an open forum for empowered consumers to share information about treatment options, locations for services, and other healthcare-related issues with their providers as well as other consumers/patients and to evaluate those options, services, providers, payers and pharmaceuticals.

Profile of a Customer-led Healthcare Organization

David Siegel, author of Futurize Your Enterprise: Business Strategy in the Age of E-Customer, (Wiley, 1999); talks about converting from a service or product delivery organization to becoming a customer led organization. Instead of healthcare organizations delivering products or services, they refocus on identifying
categories of customers they want to serve and then building the services that those customers request. To a limited degree this has started to happen with the
rise of single-focus service locations within healthcare delivery organizations, such as Women’s Health or Sports Fitness Centers. When combined with similarly focused Internet sites or pages, customers can communicate with these centers whenever and however they want. They can obtain information personalized to them, communicate with others with similar interests or conditions, conduct transactions such as scheduling appointments or paying invoices, or even, heaven forbid, be entertained on-line.

David Siegel’s table shows how customer and employee experiences change when an organization moves from a management-led company to a customer-led
company. For some in healthcare, a customer-led company would be the equivalent of the inmates running the asylum, but when the customer is a targeted patient group and the healthcare organization listens, creating the environment that continually meets or exceeds that patient group’s expectations, the results are better healthcare for the targeted audience and improved financial health to the organization.

Conclusion
The demographic, educational, financial and information changes unleashed on the healthcare industry will provoke major changes in delivery, payment and
pharmaceutical organizations during the next decade. Do they constitute a revolution? Yes. A revolution is an overthrow of the existing order and an
overhaul of existing institutions. The changes promulgated by these forceful consumers during the next decade will be revolutionary. They will use the
Internet, HIPAA, the excess healthcare capacity, alternative caregivers and changes in health insurance to coerce healthcare into becoming consumer-centric
and led.

The baby boomers have been a potent force throughout their lives, from the explosion they wrought in school building in the 1950’s to the changes they have
instigated in financial services in the 1990’s. Now as they age, they are weighing in against one of the most formidable cultures and its institutions in America –
Healthcare. They want control over their healthcare, they want it now, they want it at their convenience and they want the full story.

Consumers will use their financial clout to drive for control and convenience in their healthcare. As they take control over the financial aspect of healthcare, they will use their financial clout to obtain that control and convenience. They will buy the health insurance plan that best meets their needs and the needs of their family. They will seek out the most efficient and highest quality healthcare resources using the Internet. It is likely that marketing competition will increase among providers, payers, and pharmaceuticals companies as they seek to become the healthcare entity of choice. Like the optical business that became very efficient with the arrival of Pearl Vision and other mass merchandisers of eyewear, prices will
likely fall.

The Internet provides these empowered consumers with tools never before available. They have tools for gathering information from sources everywhere, from such well-known institutions as the Mayo Clinic to such unknowns as a single provider or non-traditional therapist. They can speak out on-line with their friends, friends they make on-line who share their concerns or their medical
Using the Internet, they can criticize, praise, attack, or confront in unheard of ways. The Internet levels the healthcare hierarchy. It enables the empowered consumer to gain the knowledge to become the provider’s partner, to seek out the hospital or health delivery location with the highest reputation for success and to identify pharmaceuticals or non-traditional alternative therapies that address their medical situation. The Internet gives empowered consumers new avenues to explore options and to demand choices.

Healthcare institutions ability to survive will depend on their paying attention to these forces. They will have to become more customer-centric. They will have to
begin delivering products and services according to the demands of these empowered consumers. For years, the healthcare culture has catered to the
provider who determined how 80 percent of all healthcare dollars were spent. During this next decade, consumers will drive how healthcare is delivered, and
healthcare organizations will have to find ways to listen and respond to those demands.

Here again, the Internet can play a significant role. Because the Internet knows no international or time boundaries, only language boundaries, healthcare
organizations can reach new communities never before easily touched. The Internet offers healthcare organizations means to learn more about their
customers than they ever did before and to make contact with prospective customers they could never connect with before.

Healthcare delivery organizations can foster the creation of on-line communities that can guide new service development, new treatments, and uncover new
findings. These on-line communities, for example, can gather together patients, their caregivers and providers according to medical condition allowing them to
share information about their condition, becoming their own moderated on-line support groups. These groups can inform other healthcare providers what they
need, what they are encountering, other diagnostic or treatment options they learn from each other, as well as let them know about their experiences. On-line
experts can offer insights into various treatment options available at their facility and learn from these communities about treatments they did not know. Not only the Internet, but also email can encourage greater communication between provider and patient and help to promote greater compliance with treatments.

Using the Internet, health payers can offer on-line education and other wellness promotions to encourage better self-care. They can give these empowered
consumers more convenient service – on-line appointments or on-line test results. Using the Internet, health payers can provide more accurate and
comprehensive information about providers, plus update that information immediately upon receipt. Customer service can become contact service with
customers having multiple options for reaching someone for advice or information, such as the status of their claim. Health payers can learn from their
consumers, both providers and members, what new services are needed or wanted, what services encourage greater treatment compliance and self-care.

Pharmaceutical firms can encourage on-line data gathering about drug reactions or prevent adverse drug events with on-line checking. They can build patient,
caregiver or provider Internet communities around specific medical conditions to share new technologies or therapies, to gather information about side effects or adverse reactions, and to encourage dialog. Through these on-line communities, the pharmaceutical firms can encourage information sharing and other
approaches to encourage better therapy compliance. They can learn from these communities about conditions that affect their drug therapies. In addition,
pharmaceutical firms can solicit participants – both physician and patients -- for upcoming clinical trials, plus disseminate findings from those trials using the
Internet. Most importantly, by using the Internet, pharmaceutical firms can listen to those who prescribe their pharmacological therapies as well as take those
therapies to learn what their constituents want and need.

All these Internet services will assist the healthcare industry to be more consumer led, listening to what patients, providers, employers and partners need and look for within the healthcare space. Empowered consumers, using all the drivers mentioned above and most importantly the Internet, will restructure
healthcare making it consumer centric. They will overthrow the existing approaches to healthcare delivery and payment, leading the revolution in healthcare.