Study: Economic trends driving change in small healthcare practices

Weave, a Lehi-based customer communication and engagement platform, has released its “2023 Healthcare Business Insights Report,” which examines how multiple factors, including inflation and recession fears, are driving small healthcare offices to deliver a better patient experience.

Inflation has had a significant influence on patient experience, the study found. Fifty-one percent of practices raised prices in the last 90 days of 2022 and 49 percent of practices plan to raise prices in 2023. More than half of patients (53 percent) report experiencing anxiety before medical appointments and nearly two in three patients (62 percent) indicate that they have felt rushed, not heard or not paid attention to by a healthcare provider over the past 12 months. At the same time, 52 percent of providers believe patient expectations have increased since the pandemic.

While providers navigate macroeconomic shifts, patients are asking for better in-office experiences and the desire for providers to deliver digital-first solutions. And although 98 percent of providers say that technology is important to providing a great patient experience and increasing revenue, 46 percent of offices haven’t updated their office technology in over two years. This disconnect is testing an already disrupted patient-provider relationship originally brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the “convenience economy” pushes businesses across industries to adopt modern technology that enhances user experience, consumers now expect the same conveniences from their healthcare providers, such as text communication; text-to-pay; buy now, pay later options; online scheduling; and more.

“As staffing shortages and increased patient expectations continue to drive modernization, providers are more focused than ever on engaging patients digitally,” said Brett White, CEO of Weave. “Implementing modern communication technology is key to bridging this expectation gap and improving both provider and patient experiences in 2023 and beyond.”

The study found that 40 percent of providers say dealing with demanding patients is the biggest inconvenience for their healthcare office, while 87 percent of providers think their patients are not completely truthful during appointments, exemplifying lack of trust.

Weave commissioned an independent market research firm to study 360 healthcare providers and 1,040 patients. The margin of error for this study is +/- 3 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. Online sampling was conducted in partnership with Qualtrics.