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The Rise of the Health Care Bazaar

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The Rise of the Health Care Bazaar

Boston Consulting Group,

5 min read
4 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Will technology fix American health care?

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Controversial
  • Applicable
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Technology promises to erase consumer pain points, creating seamless, convenient, increasingly mobile customer experiences in nearly every industry. Legacy companies are facing an existential ultimatum: Offer your customers a convenient digital experience, or some upstart tech company will suck up your profits and, if you’re lucky, let you continue to provide the services. The US health care industry has held out for longer than most – current industry players have a lot of weight to throw around – but this special report from the Boston Consulting Group says they are on borrowed time.

Summary

The concept of the “digital bazaar” could revolutionize the health care industry.

Thousands of years ago, a new way of buying and selling sprang from the happy convergence of Middle Eastern trade routes. Bazaars, or souks, brought a broad array of products together in one place, and shoppers could compare and price-shop while competition forced sellers to improve quality, convenience and pricing while vying for customers. The bazaar has been an efficient means of bringing buyers and sellers together ever since. 

Now, technology provides the means to organize digital bazaars like eBay and Craigslist. Creating a similar setup for health care will represent a powerful evolution in the way providers and patients interact.

Patients resent the current health care business model.

In the health care industry, buyer-seller interactions are ...

About the Authors

Jon Kaplan and Natasha Taylor are professionals with the Boston Consulting Group. David W. Johnson is the CEO at 4sight Health, a hospital in Chicago. 

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