We have spent years pulling friction out of healthcare. That work is right and it should keep going. This week Reed Smith and Chris Boyer come at it from the other side and ask what the friction that remains is trying to tell us.
The frame comes from Jon Acuff, who argues that the size of the inconvenience a person will tolerate points to what they actually value. Aim that at patients and the data gets more honest than any survey. A patient who drives forty minutes past three closer hospitals for a specific surgeon is showing you a commitment you could never manufacture. A patient who hits a wall of hold music and no-shows rather than fight through it is showing you something too. The first is loyalty. The second is a system breaking in a way the industry keeps logging as patient disengagement.
One thing complicates the read. Tolerance only counts as a signal when the patient had a choice. The drive past closer options can be a referral lock, a narrow network, a single in-network plan or rural geography with no second door. Read that patient as loyal and you let an access failure pass as a win.
Then Reed and Chris flip the lens onto the organization. The initiatives that survive a budget cycle or a leadership change tend to be the ones where someone absorbed real organizational pain on purpose. Most good ideas in healthcare don’t fail because they were wrong. They stall because the inconvenience of doing them outran the conviction behind them.
In this episode, Chris and Reed cover:
- Why a patient’s tolerance for friction reads more honestly than a satisfaction score
- The line between the friction tax you impose and the friction patients accept on purpose
- When loyalty is really a captured patient with no alternative
- The four inconveniences that quietly kill good initiatives inside a health system
- How to score an initiative’s inconvenience against the commitment behind it
If purpose shows up in what you’re willing to put up with, your roadmap already knows which bets you believe in.
Mentions from the Show:
- Accenture, patient loyalty and provider selection research (access as a top factor when choosing a provider): https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insightsnew/health/difference-between-loyalty-leaving
- TP483, The Market That Competition Forgot: https://touchpoint.health/podcast/ CONFIRM slug
- TP485, Digital Equity Is Health Equity: https://touchpoint.health/podcast/ CONFIRM slug
- Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/
- Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/
- Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/
- Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social
- Reed Smith on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reedsmith.bsky.social
