#AIS: The Lanby's Tandice Urban on solving healthcare's customer service problem

The transcript opens with garbled stage chatter before the speaker is welcomed (the name is rendered as "Tandis" in the source). She says she is obsessed with bad customer service in healthcare and begins with a satirical walk through a typical visit.

Her sketch runs from an unpleasant phone call, hold music and an appointment 21 days out, to a dreary waiting room, a 30 to 40 minute wait, a paper gown, and a doctor who arrives well after the scheduled time. The comedy is the point: each step is a small indignity most patients have learned to accept.

The visit ends with roughly eight minutes of conversation, two or three of the patient's questions answered before the doctor signals it is time to wrap up, and a checkout where the bill may only arrive later by mail.

She acknowledges that some in the audience may have concierge doctors, but argues most people know some version of this experience. Her complaint is narrow: the service at the point where care is actually consumed, which she defines as anything touching the patient experience, including long waits as much as an unfriendly front-desk person.

She cites a quote she attributes to Bill Gurley, saying the US healthcare market is the least customer-centric service industry and that people are too numb to object. That prompts her three questions: why are things so bad, why should we care, and what can be done.