"Who is our customer?" Health care strategists, particularly in the provider sphere, deal with that question interminably, and often to no great purpose. Is it the patient? The patient's physician? The payer? Some higher power? All of the above? None of the above?
Here's one way to think about it: imagine if you awoke tomorrow morning to find all your physicians mysteriously teleported to some distant planet. Would your hospital remain a going concern? It wouldn't be a pretty picture, but after a period of dislocation you'd still have lots of people needing your services, directing their managed care organizations to send you money, blazing new trails to get the care they need at your facility.
Alternatively, how would the picture look if tomorrow you awoke and found your service area entirely empty of prospective patients, leaving you and your physicians to gaze at each other across empty waiting rooms and vacant surgery suites? I suppose you could return to the high-school version of playing 'doctor' - giving each other physicals and such, but as fun as that was, it won't pay many bills. Nope, your business just teleported into oblivion.
So once again, who is your customer? Here's a hint: it's the one without which your business is trashed. Use that magic teleporter to cut through the strategic murk. Answer the question the only way it can be answered.
Here's one way to think about it: imagine if you awoke tomorrow morning to find all your physicians mysteriously teleported to some distant planet. Would your hospital remain a going concern? It wouldn't be a pretty picture, but after a period of dislocation you'd still have lots of people needing your services, directing their managed care organizations to send you money, blazing new trails to get the care they need at your facility.
Alternatively, how would the picture look if tomorrow you awoke and found your service area entirely empty of prospective patients, leaving you and your physicians to gaze at each other across empty waiting rooms and vacant surgery suites? I suppose you could return to the high-school version of playing 'doctor' - giving each other physicals and such, but as fun as that was, it won't pay many bills. Nope, your business just teleported into oblivion.
So once again, who is your customer? Here's a hint: it's the one without which your business is trashed. Use that magic teleporter to cut through the strategic murk. Answer the question the only way it can be answered.
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