Can we learn from trends?

Transparency. It's everywhere. Think about it. The airline industry gets hit every quarter...who's on time? Who's cancelled the most flights? Who's bumped the most riders? Who voted who best? And yet, their transparency is so familiar to us, have we considered their promotion? Has anyone actually had a friendly experience with the friendly sky airline? I actually had a customer service rep for that airline YELL at me when my flight was canceled. Then, she proceeded to yell at her supervisor during which time she denied yelling at anyone...It's been a terrible summer to be a consultant that relies on any airline to get you anywhere...In 4 weeks I've had a dozen flights on 3 airlines, and have YET to have any flight or any leg of any flight come within 1 1/2 hours of the scheduled time. Yet, based upon my earlier blog posting, I am thrilled that the folks at Jet Blue have recovery down to an art form. Good for them. I'll bet the healthcare industry could learn from them....but that line of thought is fodder for another blog posting...

The food industry has had transparency as a standard now for several years...every label listing every ingredient, and it's nutritional value (or lack thereof)...and now even greater scrutiny over using words like "real" "fresh" "organic" "100%" and other misleading references...no fat doesn't mean no calories. Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore are launching their next book next month, and I've had the pleasure of an early sneak peak. Authenticity--what consumers really want takes a look at breaking experiences into four categories: real-real; fake-real; real-fake; and fake-fake. What a great classification system for transparency!

This past week I was intrigued with learning more about the bottled water industry. (Speaking of transparency...) One of the networks did a story on the three big bottlers of water...a cagillion dollar industry...Coke, Pepsi and Nestle to name afew...and revealed to the world that the source of their water was....drum roll....a faucet! Filtered, purified, etc, but it started out as tap water. Surprised? Probably not.

So why are we surprised that patients want to know more about our outcomes? Other people's experiences with us and our treatment plans? I am surprised that people don't want to know more! We don't interview our physicians before we turn our healthcare decisions over to them...I'll bet the average woman gets more referrals for her hairdresser than she does her family practice doctor...

Do we think this will change? You bet it will. Once we can find a way to make the data meaningful to the average person...the information relevant to those who look for it, and physicians encourage their patients to ask these type of questions. Real-real..that's what I want.