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{Note:  This is the third installment a blog series spotlighting the impact the Millennial generation is having – and will continue to have – on healthcare.}

Millennials are shaking up customer service.   Look around:  more and more restaurants and stores are providing “Order Online, Pick Up in Store” services, much like hotels now offering on-line check-in and check-out procedures.  What does this generational shift mean for your local health department or behavioral health agency or community health center?  How do you interact with and cater to this new generation?

“Established healthcare companies and brands could lose their consumer base to new entrants that better understand what Millennials are looking for,” states  Lynn O’Conner Vos (CEO of Grey Health Group/KANTAR) in a report on millennials and their impact on healthcare. Vos makes this statement under the heading “Communication is the Cure”, further highlighting our next topic in how millennials will be impacting your agency.

Likewise, agencies with an electronic health record up and running are being able to offer a tech-forward looking face to this critical generational cohort. [Just as importantly, young employees would rather use an EHR than pen and paper. More on that facet in an upcoming blog.]  If your agency isn’t putting a tech-savvy face before your clientele, it’s time to wake up and smell the espresso macchiato:  communications regarding appointments can and should be handled with the push of a button – on both ends.   Use of electronic patient consent forms also increases a pro-technological image which, as a bonus, decreases employee workload and promotes more efficient time management for both client and health care provider.

In a separate report, also by Kantar/The Futures Company, the same issue appears:  “As Millennials develop into fully fledged consumers, they bring their tech savvy ways with them, and expect the brands they interact with to follow suit.”   A Gallup report confirms: “Millennials are more likely to communicate using newer technologies.”

While these findings surprise no one, failing to take action on them may result in your agency being unprepared – and therefore unable – to reach this critical generation.  Millennials simply will not trust any health agency with which they cannot communicate digitally.  It is up to you to earn their trust.

Want to be able to maintain effective services which are beneficial both health-wise for your clients and fiscally for your agency? “Up” the technology ante for your agency:  communicate via text, email, and voicemail via smart phones via your electronic health record.  A “hip” EHR will readily assist with a Communicator App which will be barking right up the millennials tree –  and have your agency doing its job:  making certain that appointments which are booked are appointments which are kept (read: decreasing “no-shows”) . . . which is good for everyone – be it millennials or any other member of any other generational cohort.

It’s simply time to get “techie”-with-it!