Mark E. Lutes, Chair of the firm’s Board of Directors and a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was featured in an MCOL ThoughtLeaders newsletter, on the topic of “What healthcare trend has piqued your interest the most regarding implications for 2018?”
Following is an excerpt:
Most intriguing to me is a development or trend that we all know is coming but has not taken sufficient shape for it to have come into focus or for it to yet have a single or a comprehensive name. Sometimes we call it “consumerism,” other times “digital health” or “telehealth.” Each can shape the future of health care consumer experience.
We are in the midst with the reshaping of the retail experience through Amazon. That world features new curation of options, new ordering patterns, and new delivery expectations. We know that, inevitably, that type of redefinition will come to health care delivery — but it has yet to take shape.
Large parts of a consumer’s interaction with the medical advice giver or prescriber might soon be telephonic, video mediated, digital or at a pharmacy or a site not traditionally associated with health care. What the staffing model is for the advice, prescription or therapeutic interaction will be one of the continuing experiments of the age, Moreover, retail clinics and urgent care centers may be the beginning of the evolutionary cycle in health care delivery which is the equivalent of the cycle by which the video store gave way to Netflix.
People
Chair—Board of Directors / Member of the Firm
