The Beginning of the Convenience Revolution
The convenience revolution became part and parcel of life long before the department store allowed customers to buy multiple varied products at one venue, or the milkman delivered milk to your doorstep on a regular basis. The best possible answer to the question of when the convenience revolution began is 534 A.D. That’s the year the Roman Emperor Justinian formalized the Justinian Code, a comprehensive set of laws that would serve as the legal foundation of Western civilization for centuries to come. One provision in the code mandated that each major crossroad of the Byzantine Empire feature a store “to enable the people to buy the daily necessities of life.” That decree in the code was the first evidence of the convenience revolution and the first recorded launch of a convenience store chain.
You can trace the trajectory from Emperor Justinian to Jefferson “Uncle Johnny” Green 14 centuries later. In 1927, Uncle Johnny came up with an idea to better serve the customers of the Southland Ice Company, a business that initially provided only ice to keep food cold. The ice was placed at the bottom of a box. When the ice melted, the home or business owner bought another large block of ice to keep their food refrigerated and prevent spoilage. Uncle Johnny had the idea of keeping bread, milk, eggs, and other perishables on top of the ice in the store and selling them. Now, customers could buy ice and make additional purchases of necessities for the home. Uncle Johnny focused on necessities — the kinds of products people bought to save a trip to a bigger store. The customer paid a little more than they would at a grocery store; however, they’d save themselves time and inconvenience, and make their day a little easier. Uncle Johnny’s idea, which leverages convenience and charges a little more for the same items, is now a standard business model that can be adopted by medical practices. By the way, the Southland Ice Company eventually rebranded the ice distribution business with a snappier, more powerful name — 7-Eleven — to reflect the concept of opening at 7 AM and closing at 11 PM. Today, there are more than 64,000 7-Eleven stores, and they’re the dominant player in the highly competitive convenience store sector of the economy.
What’s our take-home message? 7-Eleven stores offer the items you most want and need and are willing to charge a premium for so you can get in and out quickly, just like Justinian had in mind. Customers wanted that kind of convenience in 534 A.D., and in 1927, and your patients want it today. That convenience wave Uncle Johnny rode to economic success has only picked up speed and strength since 1927; it’s now a tsunami. And as it moves forward, it will continue to affect everyone and everything in its path, including your practice.
Examples of Convenience in Healthcare
Convenient access to care is probably at the top of the patient wish list. Patients want access to care when they need to be seen by a doctor. Practices can accommodate urgencies and emergencies by leaving a few patient slots each morning and afternoon open for patients who need to be seen ASAP.
In-office Drug Dispensing
In-office drug dispensing is another convenience that patients appreciate, allowing them to avoid the 30 to 60 minutes often required to have a prescription filled at a pharmacy. In-office drug dispensing is also an excellent source of ancillary income, with some practices earning an additional $40,000 per physician per year.
Insurance and Demographic Information
Patients understand that they will be required to complete insurance and demographic forms when they become new patients. It is helpful to the practice and convenient for the patient if they can complete forms and a health questionnaire before coming to the office, rather than sitting in the reception area, which can affect the schedule. Practices should provide this information on their websites and make it possible for patients to submit the completed forms electronically to the practice. If that is not possible, the patient can print the form and bring it at the time of their visit.
However, patients only want to fill out these forms once. If they go to another doctor within the group or to an imaging center within the practice, it is important that the information is available to each department, so the patient only has to fill out these forms once. Therefore, it is imperative that the data be accessible to all departments and physicians within the group or the hospital.
Lab Tests and Imaging
Patients appreciate one-stop shopping for their medical care. Patients appreciate the convenience of obtaining lab tests and imaging studies at the time of their visit to the doctor’s office, especially if those services are available within the practice. The practice is truly patient-centric when the patient has lab tests or imaging studies at the time of their visit, and the results are given to the patient immediately upon completion of the test.
One of us (NHB) obtains PSA testing both as a screening procedure and for follow-up after treatment of prostate cancer. Most men are very anxious about the results of the test, especially after they have had definitive therapy for their cancer. The anxiety is only accentuated when after they have the blood drawn, they are told that the results won’t be available for days or even weeks. When testing is done in the office, the patient is delighted to wait 30 to 45 minutes to obtain the results and discuss them with the doctor, compared with the sleepless nights and anxious days if he had to wait much longer for the results. Offering in-house testing is truly a convenience that will endear you to your patients and create a wonderful word-of-mouth buzz about your practice.
Text Messaging in the Medical Practice
Benefits of Texting with Patients
There’s no better way to become more convenient for your patients than to consider communicating with them via text messaging. As patients continue to assume responsibility for their care, doctors are leveraging healthcare technology that helps connect patients to that care. Those innovations, when used correctly, help drive a better overall consumer experience.
Today, it is difficult to reach a patient by landline, because most patients no longer have one. Currently, 95% of Americans own a mobile phone, and 77% own a smartphone. Because of the popularity of cellular technology, patients today are more likely to send and receive text messages.(1) Although texting may first have become popular among teens and young adults, the age gap in technology usage continues to shrink. Some 80% of adults aged 65 and older have a cell phone and 42% have a smart phone. And more than 90% of smartphone owners over age 50 text weekly.(1) Given the ubiquity of cellular technology, many baby boomers are more likely to be reached on their mobile devices, and providers who serve this growing demographic should seize the opportunity to offer them the convenience of engaging through text messaging.
Reaching your patients through the technology they already use in their daily activities is key to patient engagement, and email and text are the most effective ways to reach patients of all ages. This is a convenience patients expect, and it is easy to implement, and very inexpensive to offer to your patients.
Now doctors recognize that patients want to communicate the way they do in daily life. Email and text have an important place in doctor–patient communication, and both modalities remain patients’ top choices for connecting with their doctors outside the medical office. The telephone is an antiquated way to connect with your patients.
Texting offers patients a faster, more convenient way to respond to their physicians. It only takes a few seconds for a patient or a physician to reply to a text, which eliminates the hassle of finding time during a busy workday to call or email to confirm, reschedule, or cancel an office visit.
Today’s consumers, including our patients, are already accustomed to receiving text messages from companies. Text messaging has quickly become one of the most popular ways for doctors to communicate with patients, and patients are starting to expect this type of interaction with healthcare providers.(2)
There are other benefits to medical practices that make use of texting with their patients. Text message reminders can help the consumer be more compliant, therefore decreasing the loss of revenue related to missed appointments, as well as the need for schedule changes with the provider.(3)
Caveats on Texting
Texting is a wonderful convenience for your patients, but certain precautions must be considered before embarking on this mode of communication. First, it is necessary to have signed consent from existing patients granting the doctor or practice permission to communicate via text messaging. This consent then becomes a part of the EMR.
Next, it is necessary to enable password protection on the phone used to send text messages. The practice also must confirm that the patient’s cell phone number is recorded correctly. The IT technician must confirm that all mobile devices used to send messages are always secure, including at the office and at home.
Most practices are unaware that it is important to delete text messages after communication is complete and the necessary information has been documented appropriately in the patient’s record.
Of course, it is important that no text messages contain PHI, in case there is a breach of the connection between the practice and the patient or if the data is stolen or held ransom until an exorbitant payment is made. There are HIPAA-compliant programs that offer encrypted software to enable secure messaging. One example is pMD.com, which is a free, HIPAA-compliant software program that allows you to safely communicate — even sensitive information — with your patients.
We also recommend that you do not record and use the patient’s first and last names in the address book when sending text messages. This is best accomplished by storing only the first name and last initial and avoiding using the patient’s first and last names in any text message.
The tone of your text is important; avoid abbreviations and medical language that would not be understood by the patient. Text messages should be short and concise, and any message over 160 characters should be created as two separate messages.
We suggest that you set up clear expectations with your patients about texting and how quickly you will reply to text messages. Twenty-four hours is reasonable.
Finally, do not provide medical advice to anyone who is not an existing patient. You wouldn’t give medical advice over the phone to a stranger, and you shouldn’t do so via text either.
Bottom Line: Convenience is relevant to your practice. It would be a strategic catastrophe to assume you are already “convenient enough” for your customer, and it is potentially a huge marketplace advantage to make what you offer to patients and their families a little more convenient. To be of service 24/7, think 7-Eleven!
References
Mobile Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center, November 20, 2025. www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
No time to talk: Americans sending/receiving five times as many texts compared to phone calls each day, according to new report. PRNewswire. March 25, 2015. www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/no-time-to-talk-americans-sendingreceiving-five-times-as-many-texts-compared-to-phone-calls-each-day-according-to-new-report-300056023.html .
Free C, Phillips G, Watson L, et al. The effectiveness of mobile-health technologies to improve health care service delivery processes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS Medicine. January 15, 2013. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001363