Patients Expect Healthcare to Follow-Through: What 1,000 consumers told us

Healthcare organizations still place a lot of responsibility on patients before and after they ever see a clinician.

To better understand the current patient experience and what consumers expect from healthcare, Zyter commissioned a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, conducted by Dynata. In the survey, 29% of respondents said having to repeat information multiple times to different people or organizations is one of their biggest frustrations when managing healthcare.

The broader expectation is clear: when healthcare organizations have the information, consumers expect them to act on it.

Our survey revealed:

• 46% expect healthcare organizations to share relevant information between providers.
• 38% expect them to schedule necessary follow-up care.
• 37% expect them to notify the appropriate care team when an important change occurs.

Taken together, these expectations point to something broader than convenience. Consumers expect healthcare organizations to take greater responsibility for continuity: moving information, initiating the next step, and making sure the right people know when action is needed.

Patients expect healthcare to connect the dots

Patient expectations extend beyond access. Consumers expect healthcare organizations to ensure information reaches the right provider, follow-up care begins, and the appropriate care team knows when something changes.

That raises the bar for the digital front door. Portals, apps, and scheduling tools have made it easier to enter the healthcare system and access information. The next expectation is continuity after that first interaction.

For healthcare organizations, delivering that experience requires the people, processes, and technology behind the scenes to work together so information leads to action and the next step does not depend on the patient managing every handoff.

However, consumers draw a line around AI's role and have clear preferences for how AI should work within that experience.

Where consumers want AI and people involved

• 30% are comfortable with AI sending reminders and follow-up messages.
• 28% are comfortable with AI scheduling or changing appointments.
• 49% want a person involved in making a diagnosis.
• 40% want a person involved in making or changing a treatment decision.

The findings suggest consumers are more open to AI handling routine administrative tasks, while preferring human involvement in diagnosis and treatment decisions.

That creates a practical role for AI: prepare information, route requests, coordinate routine next steps, and reduce administrative work while preserving clinician involvement where expertise and judgment matter.

Closing healthcare's follow-through gap

Today's challenge isn't access to information or intelligence. It's turning that knowledge into action, transforming shared intelligence into what should actually happen next.

Closing that gap requires healthcare organizations to turn insight into follow-through. A care gap needs to lead to action. A recommended next step needs to be initiated. Information needs to reach the right person at the right time.

The survey puts that problem of disconnected actions into very human terms. Consumers may not call the issue what it is, fragmented workflows or disconnected systems, but they experience its effects in the form of repeated information, missed handoffs, delayed follow-up, and having to manage the process themselves. Their expectation is simple: the system should follow through.

The new measure of an effective healthcare experience should be whether follow-through actually happens: Did the information get where it needed to go? Did someone schedule the follow-up? Did the right person act? Did the process reach an outcome?

The opportunity for AI is to help close the gap between knowing and doing. Intelligence can identify what should happen next. AI can help carry that intelligence through the people, systems, and workflows required to move the process forward. At Zyter, we describe that as Connected Action: turning what healthcare knows into coordinated action, while preserving human judgment where it matters.

The survey gives us the consumer perspective: people expect healthcare to go beyond providing access to information. They want it to take responsibility for moving their care forward.

This November, we'll bring those findings to the CHIME Fall Forum for our focus group, "The Next Digital Front Door: From AI Assistance to AI-Orchestrated Provider Operations Across the Care Journey," where we'll explore how healthcare leaders are thinking about the systems, workflows, and operating capabilities required to deliver that experience.

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