2024 Predictions

Zocdoc founder and CEO, Oliver Kharraz, MD shares five patient predictions and five industry predictions for the year ahead.

What Patients Will Want in 2024

1. More Americans will choose cash-pay services that offer guaranteed, upfront pricing.

With both healthcare costs and adoption of high-deductible health plans on the rise, Americans will be increasingly price-sensitive in 2024. Uncertainty and lack of transparency when it comes to out-of-pocket costs, even for in-network care, will drive patients to increasingly select services that offer guaranteed, up-front, straightforward pricing.

2. Patients will choose convenience over traditional providers for transactional care needs.

Visiting a traditional physician for preventive care visits or more long-term and complex care needs will remain patients’ first preference. However, they will also look outside the patient-provider relationship for services that are more transactional in nature. As such, we can expect a rise in urgent care bookings for acute issues, as well as increased utilization of virtual and instant prescription services.

3. Mental health bookings will rise in the back half of 2024, tied to the election.

As America heads into another presidential election year, patients nationwide will be grappling with tensions surrounding the vote and its outcome. More Americans will likely turn to mental health professionals in the months before and after the election, starting in the summer and potentially continuing through the inauguration and beyond.

4. Medicare beneficiaries will increase adoption of technology that helps them navigate care.

These aren’t our grandparents’ Medicare beneficiaries. Most of today’s 65 and up population were in their 30s and 40s when the consumer internet took off. They are tech-fluent in other areas of their lives, from streaming entertainment to booking travel online to video chatting with their loved ones, and they are the first digitally savvy set of Medicare beneficiaries. As such, adoption of health and tech services that help them easily navigate care will continue to accelerate.

5. Semaglutide-related bookings will continue to rise.

As supply bottlenecks ease, the FDA approves new medications for weight loss and Americans observe other patients’ visible success, demand for these drugs will continue to rise.

How the Industry Will Shift in 2024

1. Big Tech will continue to overpromise and under-deliver in healthcare.

Over the past decade, Google, Apple and Amazon have launched healthcare ventures, each with ample fanfare but little to show for it. This stems from a disconnect between what patients or the industry need and what these companies are primarily solving for: how to leverage their respective core businesses to make money in healthcare. Apple is focused on driving adoption of its hardware (Apple Watch), Google on big data applied to clinical questions (Verily) and Amazon on leveraging its supply chain in areas like pharmacy (Pillpack, Amazon Clinic). Retrofitting their core competencies into healthcare will remain a subpar strategy for Big Tech, which will make more noise than impact in 2024.

2. AI will free up a significant portion of providers’ time.

While there’s been much discussion about AI’s potential uses in healthcare, 2024 will be the year we’ll see broader adoption, starting with the greatest opportunity for physicians: automatic note-taking. Early adopters of AI medical scribes could see a real 20 percent time savings and capacity improvement. This has the potential to reduce provider staffing bottlenecks by opening up significant capacity in providers’ schedules, which they can redirect toward seeing more patients. This may lead to a surplus of provider capacity and a meaningful shift in the current supply-demand imbalance.

3. Consumers’ digital front door to care will consolidate.

Patients don’t want to manage a portfolio of disparate apps and logins for access to different care services. In 2024, there will be greater consolidation of the front-end technology that helps patients access and navigate healthcare. In-person care, telehealth, access to prescriptions and more will come together, unifying the consumer experience. As with all other consumer industries, the digital “front door” with the most complete offering that delivers the most value throughout the patient experience will come out on top.

4. Patient payor mix will be crucial to hospitals’ strategy for regaining financial footing.

While hospitals and health systems are often at capacity, many are still struggling financially. This is in part because they’re not paying close enough attention to their payor mix. In 2024, these providers will work to meaningfully and quickly shift their patient payor mix, investing in initiatives that will help attract a more commercially insured clientele.

5. Patients will become savvier prescription shoppers.

As with cash-pay healthcare services, patients will increasingly go out of network and look toward competitively priced cash-pay prescription services. With pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) under increased pressure and scrutiny, alternative pharmacy services that help consumers go direct and pay out of pocket at competitive rates will see adoption significantly grow in 2024.