Apple and Worksite Health Services
My excitement about the emerging market of worksite health services just keeps growing. First, I got to work on KLAS’ recent Worksite Health Services 2018 report. It serves as a market introduction and vendor guide for anyone even half as interested in the space as I am.
As a quick refresher, worksite health services refers to employers that want to provide on-site healthcare for their employees. Most do this either by entering a contract with a third-party vendor to provide the clinic and service, or a more do-it-yourself model involving bringing in their own clinical staff.
In the report, we focus mainly on third-party vendors who manage worksite clinics and health services for employer organizations. The companies who engage these vendors are interested in the many benefits of worksite health services, such as reducing costs, increasing productivity, providing employee incentives, and most importantly, keeping employees healthy. Apple has been on the list of these companies . . . until this week.
On February 27th, Apple announced that it will be heading in a different direction: managing worksite health services themselves. This approach is also briefly described in KLAS’ report. As part of their new move, Apple will limit the role of its current vendor and essentially learn how to become a healthcare provider.
Is anyone else reeling over this news?
Yes, Apple is a force to be reckoned with—or even bowed to—in the software world. But Apple isn’t simply honing their facial-recognition functionality or experimenting with user interfaces. They are diving into human healthcare—easily the most complex industry on the planet. Will Apple sink or swim?
Frankly, I would be surprised to see Apple completely flub this opportunity; Apple doesn’t flub very often. If they do in this case, the healthcare market as we know it will probably remain largely unaffected.
But what if it works? What if Apple nails the role of healthcare provider as well as they’ve nailed intuitive software? If Apple’s known ambitions and rumored plans to disrupt healthcare continue to accelerate, it may be only a matter of time before Apple begins operating healthcare clinics in your workplace or community.
Possibly the most thrilling part of that prospect is that Apple is a trendsetter. If Apple becomes an outstanding healthcare provider, it’s a sure bet that other companies would feel a desire or even pressure to succeed in healthcare as well. Ultimately, we could now be seeing Apple make waves that hopefully start a tsunami of change.
And my greatest hope is that this change brings about better care. At the end of the day, every single one of us will likely become a healthcare patient. This makes it easy to take KLAS’ mission and make it personal.
This is why I can’t stop talking about worksite health services. It’s the reason that KLAS will be doing more research to get customer feedback about the vendors in this space, their services, and the value they bring to healthcare. Are you excited yet?