6 Tips to boost your telehealth patients' loyalty

This is an article about the future battle between telehealth and telewealth. Telehealth - the version of telemedicine most of you practiced during the pandemic - will be pitted against telewealth, the Amazonization of healthcare in which patient care becomes a commodity. Your success or lack thereof will rest upon patient loyalty. That bears repeating: your success or lack thereof will rest upon patient loyalty.Please permit me to explain.

Amazon, CVS, United Healthcare, and other conglomerates are investing serious resources (aka telewealth) into taking away your core business: patient care. I imagine artificial intelligence and treatment algorithms will be part of their strategy, yet the main strategy will be convenience: healthcare when a patient wants it, where a patient wants it.

Think about it: so many of us want to support local business, but time after time we succumb to Amazon’s advances. In the absence of a personal relationship with a retailer, convenience trumps loyalty time and time again.You cannot compete with the convenience of 24/7/365, but you can compete – and win - on loyalty. I believe it is the key.

Here are six steps I urge you to take.