Do Gen Xers and Millennials hold the key to success for the Affordable Care Act? If they do, the healthcare community needs to change its approach to patient engagement.

InCrowd has been participating in Pathways to Patient Engagement, a webinar series organized by KC Health. Over the last couple of months we have been asking our Crowd of patients and healthcare professionals to share their feedback on the current state of patient engagement. A few of the major highlights include…

• A notable gap between physician and health consumer reported patient engagement activities currently in use
• As an industry, we are a long way off from ‘true’ patient engagement
• Barriers between the health consumer, their data and access to their health care team need to be removed
• Social, mobile and online access are a ‘must’ if the healthcare community expects to engage younger health consumers

The news media and online healthcare discussions have positioned the younger health consumer as a critical piece to the overall success of the Affordable Care Act. Indicating that the younger health consumer must sign up and be part of the program to help manage the overall costs. While our survey did not specifically ask about the ACA, we did get feedback from those under the age of 50 on patient engagement and their involvement in the current healthcare system.

You can view the health consumer feedback from Gen Xers and Millennials here: Patient Engagement: Health Consumer Insights from Gen Xers and Millennials.

Is it time to take patient engagement beyond a few web-based tools that are mandated by Meaningful Use legislation? If the healthcare community truly wants to include Gen Xers and Millennials, not to mention the digital native demographic that will soon include everyone, things will have to change. Mobile and social can’t simply be buzzwords, scheduling appointments online won’t be considered patient engagement and online healthcare interaction will be the norm.

To get more detail, watch the most recent webinar Pathways to Patient Engagement: Health Consumer Insights highlighting feedback from 330 US health consumers – all under the age of 50. You can also watch the initial webinar Pathways to Patient Engagement: Insights from the Physician Community outlining feedback from 300 US based primary care physicians.

What are your thoughts on including younger health consumers in the healthcare process? Are we on the right path? Do we need to change course and adopt a new way of providing care and interacting with health consumers?