By Nick Hernandez bio The changes to the healthcare industry are increasingly focused on addressing patients as consumers. Such a change means that providers must, of course, emphasize quality and work toward price transparency, but they must also seek to determine what patients desire most. It is this last effort that is transforming the healthcare sector more like businesses of other sectors; what consumers want, is what drives competition and ingenuity (and oftentimes commoditization). Perhaps more than ever, physicians need to be focused not just on attracting more patients, but also on not losing the patients they have. Under the healthcare reform legislation, the federal government views patients as consumers. Consequently, national attention has been placed on the patients as consumers, and that attention has not gone unnoticed. Indeed, patients… . . . read more.