As I wrote in my last column, consumers are going to be the ones that drive health care reforms in two ways. First, they’re using technology to improve their own health. Second, and the topic of today’s column, consumers will help revolutionize the way health care is delivered. Companies like Teladoc and American Well were first to break the traditional office and clinic-based visit model on a large scale, promising and delivering physician access 24/7/365. They have given consumers the first good look at where health care delivery is going. And it’s the current and next generation of health care technologies—from relative newcomers like Scanadu, CliniCloud and First Opinion—who will help completely revolutionize the health care delivery model from the outside. I also see ways how giants like Amazon.com, CVS Health Corp., Qualcomm, IBM, Verizon Communications and Walgreen Co. can and will get in on the action.To see just how badly we need reforms in health care delivery, let’s look at a common health system encounter from the lens a typical consumer. I’ll use our family as the storyline, as we have five children, so have frequent opportunities to access health care, with hundreds of encounters over the past 20 years.
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