Healthcare is complicated — but members want their experiences with health insurance to be as easy as shopping on Amazon, executives told Becker's.
John Bennett, MD, president and CEO of Capital District Physicians Health Plan, told Becker's today's consumers are looking for things "instantaneously."
"People talk about the Amazon effect," he said. "People want everything right away."
One thing CDPHP, based in Albany, N.Y., has done to speed up service is create its own retail pharmacies, Dr. Bennett said.
"We have many pharmacies in our network, but in our own pharmacy, we do deliveries. You can get your drug ordered, and it comes to your house the next day, and it's free," Dr. Bennett said. "It's very easy to do. People want things pretty quickly these days, and to the extent we can, we try to build [that]."
Gratia Carver, vice president and chief experience officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, said it is important to remember health plan members are comparing their experiences to the speed and convenience they have with services like Amazon.
"It helps us focus on what we need to be doing internally to help our members, especially navigating complex healthcare in the U.S.," Ms. Carver told Becker's. "To me, that speaks to the change in the last decade or so, because other sectors of the consumer's life have gotten easier. There's a growing expectation that 'things are easy for me here, why do you make it so complicated over here?'"