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PwC's U.S. Healthcare Consumer Insights and Engagement Survey
Overview
Tune in as authors of PwC's U.S. Healthcare Consumer Insights and Engagement Survey discuss key findings and provide insights into understanding consumer concerns around healthcare costs, the adoption of tech-enabled healthcare, trust in the healthcare system and how we can take action.
Key topics include:
- The survey's background, focus and objectives that will address ongoing consumer concerns and distrust in the healthcare system
- Generational and financial differences reveal significant disparities in healthcare experiences and engagement amongst various age groups
- Notable key statistics and insights on consumer behavior and perceptions related to trust, affordability, delayed care and digital health across the health ecosystem
- Considerations for healthcare stakeholders to enhance care delivery and to address the evolving needs of diverse patient populations
Topics: Healthcare, affordability, health, care, care delivery, employers, consumers, medical cost trends, health plans, affordable healthcare act, economic inflation, macroeconomics, supply chain, hospitals, providers, payers, workforce, home care, nursing facilities, patients, private equity, physicians, drug manufacturers, distributors, retailers, purchasers, coverage policies, innovation, investments, primary care, insurers, value-based care, PCPs, AI, regulations, affordability
Episode transcript
Find episode transcript below.
00:00:03:01 Welcome to PwC’s Next in Health podcast. I'm Jenny Colapietro, PwC’s Consulting Commercial Leader, and I'm joined today by Thom Bales and Keith Fengler from PwC’s Health Services and Omar Chane from PwC’s Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences.
00:00:21:04 And today I am very excited because we're discussing the newly released US Healthcare Consumer Insights and Engagement survey, which has some fresh insights that we've gathered from more than 2,000 healthcare consumers. The report delves into some ongoing consumer concerns over affordability to the adoption of tech-enabled healthcare and trust in the healthcare system. Thom, Keith, and Omar, welcome to the podcast.
THOM BALES:
00:00:45:01 Thank you for having us, Jenny.
KEITH FENGLER:
00:00:47:10 Agreed. Thank you. We're excited to discuss what consumers want from their healthcare.
OMAR CHANE:
00:00:50:04 Hello, everybody.
JENNY COLAPIETRO:
00:00:53:10 Great. To kick things off, Thom, can you just tell us a bit about the genesis of the survey? Why did we conduct it, and what are we hoping to understand from the consumer responses?
THOM BALES:
00:01:04:10 Sure, Jenny. We continue to see significant transformation in the healthcare space. We see cutting edge technology, reshaping healthcare is delivered and rising patient expectations, the importance of consumers and personalization. And we are trying to continually understand how consumers are shifting their views and navigating these changes.
00:01:23:10 And really that's the genesis of this survey. We specifically wanted to gain insight into the following areas. We wanted to explore the ongoing consumer concerns about the cost of healthcare, how barriers are impacting their ability to seek timely care. We wanted to understand and to gauge how consumers are embracing tech-enabled healthcare solutions and their trust levels with these technologies relative to some of their legacy areas of trust as digital health increases in popularity.
00:01:53:06 And lastly, we aim to measure the level of trust in places and in various healthcare entities themselves, such as providers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, tech companies, retail; is this trust significantly influences their engagement and behaviors and where they seek information and where and how they make decisions.
00:02:12:02 Our goal was to uncover actionable insights that can help the industry address these challenges and better meet the needs of healthcare consumers while also helping our clients understand that journey.
JENNY COLAPIETRO:
00:02:23:05 That's great. So, some actionable insights. Let's dig into it. So, what have we learned? Are things changing?
THOM BALES:
00:02:29:10 They are. The insights from the survey really start to highlight the diverse ways that consumers experience our healthcare system today influenced by their generation, their health status, their financial capability to afford healthcare, medications, and just where they are in life. A few points that emerged for us, we saw generational and financial differences.
00:02:50:08 We saw status and life differences. We saw differences between what we're calling today, the sandwich generation versus the baby boomers versus Gen Z. Consumers’ interactions with healthcare systems vary across many, many different dimensions, including dimensions around their own complex challenges, their chronic care needs, and how they are getting care for themselves as well as care for others around them.
00:03:16:03 We see the younger generations more inclined to adopt digital health tools, while older patients often prefer traditional in-person visits. They are open to digital, but their trust often remains with many of the legacy sources of information. We see the sandwich generation behaviors evident as well. It’s fascinating to see.
00:03:35:05 And Keith will talk a little bit more around how urgent care pops up into the life and how the sandwich generation is prioritizing caring for themselves versus caring for others. And a time when we know that prevention is more important than anything, and at the same time, personalization requires us to develop very intimate relationships with our consumers.
00:03:55:05 The survey underscores ongoing issues such as affordability of healthcare, which continues to be a major barrier for many customers. And additionally, even just navigating the healthcare system itself remains challenging, it's complex even for those who understand it, it's difficult to understand where to go and how to get reimbursement, how to seek access, how to know that you're getting the right quality of care.
00:04:18:00 And many individuals really need extra support. There's also evidence that there's greater opportunity to better educate and engage consumers in preventative health measures. And the survey pointed to, we're kind of at the tip of the iceberg on the next generation of digital health and how we start to think about that much more than just the sort of digital engagement platform that we're all very familiar with…
00:04:44:03 With the web to how do we actually think about engaging with our consumers through the two to four hours a day that they're spending on social media. I think it's a tremendous opportunity. We start to see some highlights for that as we go through this, but by addressing some of the gaps that we have out there today and that we know in connecting with consumers, we can help them make more informed decisions and to access care more efficiently.
JENNY COLAPIETRO:
00:05:06:10 Great. So, Keith, what are some of the key findings in terms of numbers? Did anything surprise you?
KEITH FENGLER:
00:05:13:10 A couple of things surprised me. So, one insight that really stood out was that 65% of consumers, so nearly two-thirds say they don't seek care until it's urgent. This is a real aha moment if you really think about how much the health industry has tried to shift consumer behavior from seeking just sick care to really focusing on preventative care, aiming to really reduce the growing cost of healthcare.
00:05:36:07 It was also striking just how different the responses were by generation. For example, the younger generation, gen Z, roughly 39%, and then millennials at 33% are far more likely to postpone care versus baby boomers at 18%. Additionally, more than a third of women say they delay care because they struggle to find the time to see a doctor. What this really means in my mind is a vast opportunity for payers, providers, pharma companies to really engage consumers with targeted health education and outreach to both members and patients; really encouraging and incentivizing them to seek preventative care before they become sick.
00:06:16:05 We need to continue to personalize this care, get better at targeting the consumers and patients most in need of health and prevention and really reaching them through the right channels at the right time.
THOM BALES:
00:06:26:10 Thanks Keith. And another key finding that came across loud and clear is the issue of affordability. We knew from our report earlier this year, behind the numbers, the medical cost trend is at its highest level in over 10 years. It was forecast to be roughly 8% based on a survey of 20-plus health plans across the US. But the impact on consumers may be even greater than what we realized based on what we found in this survey,
00:06:52:00 which showed that seven out of 10 consumers are expressing that they feel that they're at risk of falling behind in their ability to pay for healthcare and medications. Three out of 10 outright said that they just can't afford their healthcare, and another four out of 10 said they can afford it now, but they can't afford to pay anymore.
00:07:09:04 It's time for payers, providers in pharma, government agencies also to ramp up every cost management strategy and remain relentless in this mission to make healthcare and medications more affordable. We also need to help consumers proactively estimate the cost of care, the whole quality of care that they're getting, and compare cost for test procedures and choose sites of quality of care that come in against a whole life cycle here,
00:07:33:03 not just in the moment but across the value spectrum for them at a lower cost. And lastly, it's really important to think about this in terms of where we are in the election cycle and what the most recent election says to us, which is likely to head towards the consumer having a greater share of the cost coming out of their pocket in the upcoming years.
OMAR CHANE:
00:07:56:10 So, building on what Keith and Thom have said in relating specific findings from the survey to the pharmaceutical industry, there were two key takeaways that came out loud and clear in the survey. One regarding affordability, the other regarding trust. So, for example, on the affordability side, some of the numbers that we saw in the survey is that 44% of consumers stated that they cannot pay for their medicines.
00:08:24:04 Another 61% of consumers who are dealing with health issues that restrict their quality of life also indicate that they cannot afford their medicines. So, pretty stark numbers there and the implications to pharma is to make sure that all the programs that pharma is making available to the patients in terms of patient services, patient support programs are number one, well-designed to meet the financial burden for the patients and the consumers and the consumers are well aware of the availability of these programs.
00:08:58:07 On the trust side, that's another key finding that came across from the survey is that the pharmaceutical industry, may be not surprising, continues to suffer in terms of trust. So, the industry has ranked one of the lowest in terms of who the consumers trust for health information. For example, the pharmaceutical industry ranked 6% in terms of trust versus pharmacies that ranked 60% in terms of the consumer findings.
00:09:27:06 The challenge for the industries to figure out how to also engage with the other trusted partners in the healthcare ecosystem such as pharmacists, such as providers, caregivers, to be able to relate to the patients and the consumers in a way that can help address their most challenging healthcare needs.
KEITH FENGLER:
00:09:47:03 Yeah, thanks Omar. I wanted to touch on trust as well. We did see some interesting insights. Doctors continue to hold a strong trust advantage as like the leading source for health information among all consumers, but it did vary pretty widely from a generational perspective, ranging from 40% among ages 18 to 24 compared to 84 for consumers 65 and older.
00:10:11:10 A growing number of young consumers are turning to technology, as you might expect, as their first stop when they have a health question. The other interesting thing, pharmacies have also evolved from being mere medication dispensaries to really trusted information sources. This was probably one of the biggest insights in my mind of the survey, was 60% of consumers placed their trust in pharmacies.
00:10:33:05 To Omar's point, only 6% view pharmacies as their primary source of information. Interestingly though, the trust from a pharmaceutical company perspective does remain low, especially post-COVID. This digital shift signals a future where traditional providers may need to engage in new ways with patients or risk becoming less relevant as a trusted information source, especially among young patients.
JENNY COLAPIETRO:
00:10:56:10 Well, it definitely sounds like there's an opportunity for pharma payers and providers to enhance their health education and outreach to consumers as it relates to prevention, affordability, and building trust. Several of you mentioned technology. Let's dig a little bit into digital health. Anything from health technology to virtual care to the use of AI. Omar, how are consumers feeling about all of that?
OMAR CHANE:
00:11:21:10 Yeah, very relevant and timely question given the adoption that we're seeing in the broader technology, in particular the emergence of GenAI technologies recently. So, this is another area where we're seeing clear and distinct differences based on different age cohorts that we surveyed in the study. For example, those that are less than 35 years are fully open to engaging in digital health tools enabled by AI.
00:11:50:06 So, taking care of things such as appointment, test results, prescription refills, engaging with their HCPs and their providers; we see a distinct trend in that particular age cohort around willingness to engage in those models. A few other data point is about 80%, quite a high number of those that are in the age bracket between 18 and 34 fully embrace GenAI and digital health solutions as compared to a slightly less than 60% for those that are over 50 years of age.
00:12:27:04 Still a pretty impressive number, but you can see the differences between different age cohorts. Another illustration across the age cohorts across income levels is about 20% of those surveyed are willing to engage in HCP assist and GenAI solutions. Again, opening the door to potential innovation that can be further pursued in this space.
00:12:53:05 On the other hand, however, one theme that emerged across is one concern that consumers have expressed around privacy and security. So, while on one hand there's a willingness to engage and explore through digital health solutions, everyone has expressed concern about safety of their data, security of their data. So, this is something that obviously all the different stakeholders will need to continue to work through to address those concerns expressed by the consumers.
JENNY COLAPIETRO:
00:13:26:10 Well, I know that all of us find ourselves at some point having to navigate the healthcare system. Are things getting easier for consumers? Thom, what does the survey tell us?
THOM BALES:
00:13:37:10 Yes and no is what the survey tells us. And it's a bit of a tale of two cities, and I think that what we see in that is that most people are able to maneuver their way through the system. What came out of the survey was that seven out of 10 said that it wasn't difficult for them, but for some, and this is when it starts to get into how do you cut the data, notably Gen Z and then particularly those who were expressing that they couldn't afford healthcare, which becomes a bit of a double whammy.
00:14:05:02 The struggle is real, and they said that it was getting more difficult to navigate the healthcare system. Amongst Gen Z themselves, nearly half said that it was difficult or very difficult to know where to go when they need healthcare. And then more broadly, 30% of all consumers who say healthcare costs are straining their finances today, they don't actually know, or they're telling us in the survey that they don't know where to go for healthcare.
00:14:29:08 Here is where we see how important it really is for this industry to continue to try to simplify our processes, simplify access to build ecosystems that are connected in ways that it helps our patients engage across them and through them. It identifies those times and those moments when they may need extra support and it needs to reflect that.
00:14:49:09 Really, when we talk about healthcare today, we're talking about social needs, we're talking about medical needs, we're talking about behavioral service needs along with the traditional medical clinical care that we think of and those needs, they're becoming more interconnected and they're becoming more prevalent.
JENNY COLAPIETRO:
00:15:08:05 This is great. The survey has a lot of insights here and gives us a lot to think about. To close this out, let's do a round robin and can each of you share how health industries should respond and are there any industry strategic bets that you'd like to call out? Keith, let's start with you.
KEITH FENGLER:
00:15:26:10 I think there are several important areas that come to play for the industry. I'll recap three of them. First one is prevention. So, really addressing risk factors of health decline. Second one being personalization, where we really continue to use data-driven customized treatments based on factors like genetics and behavior and see how we can drive additional action from that perspective.
00:15:47:03 And the third one I'd call out would be predictive and proactive analysis of wellbeing and early interventions to improve health outcomes in preventive care with a real focus on more accessibility and convenient settings for care delivery.
THOM BALES:
00:16:01:10 Yeah, I'll add to that, Keith. I said it at the beginning and I will continue to talk to this, affordability. It's a critical area we have to continue to tackle this head on. We feel that total cost of care management across health plans, health systems and pharma need to be a holistic approach. We refer to it as an affordability command center, apply it to an ecosystem level that will help moderate medical cost trends and improve affordability.
00:16:28:00 What does it involve? Reducing utilization, reducing waste, improving operational efficiency, improving the actual effectiveness of medical management operations, and getting in front of our sickest and most complex and challenging patients. We also see that investing in AI and machine learning can help us identify wasteful spending.
00:16:49:03 It can help us improve productivity, and it can help us get to the personalization that Keith started to outline around what is needed for an individual and how to find that right balance of cost and quality for them. We believe that smaller health plans have the opportunity to consider partnering with vendors, with other players in their ecosystem, even other like-minded health plans to build out competitive total cost of care management capabilities.
00:17:14:04 Four, providers, as they look at this and they continue to play an increasing role in the lifecycle of patient care, it's critical that they have a role in really educating members about making informed choices regarding their services, the cost shares that they have, the choices that they have, and how they participate and impact value-based care more broadly and rewarding both the patient and the provider for reduction of wasteful spend.
00:17:41:04 And lastly, employers. We saw through COVID that at one point, employers actually became the most trusted source of information. That came out in one of our other consumer surveys. Employers have the opportunity to use transparency in reporting that they receive from how they participate with health plans and health systems to understand the outcomes and effectiveness of the benefits that their employees receive.
00:18:04:02 And how they share that information with them and influence and provide benefit coverage to them and services that can impact their quality of care and quality of life.
OMAR CHANE:
00:18:13:10 Maybe I'll also bring in an interesting observation we were able to get through the survey, which is the growing influence of the Gen Z generation. Obviously, one of the largest cohorts that exists globally, in the US in particular. And there are two interesting parts to the role that the Gen Z can play.
00:18:31:03 They are obviously the digitally native cohort. They're used to engaging through digital solutions. They are, that's the age cohort that is most willing to engage through various digital care solutions. And there are two elements to the role that they can play.
00:18:49:07 Number one, this is a segment that because of their willingness to engage through digital health solutions, obviously, that could be an interesting segment to pursue to help them navigate their own care and take care of their own wellness. But also this is the cohort that is taking care of the older generation.
00:19:10:05 As caregivers, they could play a critical role in helping some of the older generation in navigating care and navigating affordability and gaining the trust some of these digital health solutions that the provider, payers, and pharmaceutical companies are making available to them.
JENNY COLAPIETRO:
00:19:31:10 Great. Thanks for those summaries and insights. And for our listeners, you can find this survey at pwc.com. But Thom, Keith, Omar, I want to thank you so much for joining our podcast and sharing the survey insights.
THOM BALES:
00:19:46:10 Thank you, Jenny.
KEITH FENGLER:
00:19:48:01 Thank you.
OMAR CHANE:
00:19:48:05 Thank you.
JENNY COLAPIETRO:
00:19:50:10 For more on these topics and other health industry insights driven by policy, innovation, and care delivery changes, please subscribe to our podcast at pwc.com/us/nextinhealthpodcast. Until next time, this has been Next in Health.
ANNOUNCER:
00:20:14:05 This podcast is brought to you by PwC. All rights reserved. PwC refers to the US member firm, or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates, and may sometimes refer to the PwC network. Each member firm is a separate legal entity.
00:20:28:02 Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details. This podcast is for general information purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional advisors.
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