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Should We Be Patients or Clients — That Is the Question Now
The relationships in healthcare have been steadily moving from a patient-provider one to a client or customer and it has an impact.
Several decades ago, there was a major change in the terms used to refer to people being treated in healthcare, and it was from “patient” to “client.” The change was in the service of equality or leveling the playing field, and that seemed like a good change in line with the zeitgeist of the times. But today we need to reconsider what the change may have wrought in healthcare, and there is concern.
While patients were being seen for whatever length of time the appointment may have taken, that was about to change. Individual medical offices would soon be swept up in the new wave of corporate ownership, with hospital chains (the largest hospital “system” with patient revenues of almost $50 billion in 2021) and finance firms seeking new equity markets. All of it promised consolidation, the removal of waste, efficiency, and the implementation of practices that would improve the quality of services. Did it?
A new interlocking software program was nationally taking over patient records, and it was the death knell of paper files that could easily adjust errors.
One major investment firm executive who sees healthcare as desirable in terms of a…
