BECAUSE HEALTHCARE “customers” don’t fit the conventional role of goods and services buyers, provider organizations haven’t made customer relationship management a priority.

But as consumers assume more financial responsibility through medical savings accounts, Medicare Part D doughnut holes, higher insurance deductibles and other self-pay mechanisms, hospitals are apparently starting to take notice.

“No question the consumer sector is growing and the fastest growing payer class is self-pay,” said Keith Maurer, Minneapolis-based Forthright’s vice president of healthcare solutions. “Salary.com reports that the percentage of employer plans with higher deductibles and co-payments will double next year.”

Indeed, with an escalating number of patients footing a greater financial share of their healthcare costs, the medical industry is – whether it wants to or not – becoming more retail-oriented, meaning hospitals must now think like a commercial enterprise with regard to customer relations.

The concept is giving rise to a movement commonly referred to as customer relationship management, or CRM. Software vendors like Pleasanton, Calif.-based Oracle are touting CRM systems as the engine hospitals need to effectively drive the various aspects of customer relations, including inquiries, scheduling, follow-up, billing assistance and account disclosure, as well as promising more sophisticated functions like telemedicine.

“The interesting thing about CRM is when you think about key trends in healthcare – escalating costs, the shift to outpatient care – consumers are becoming much more empowered,” said Marc Perlman, Oracle’s vice president of healthcare life sciences. “This means CRM is ripe for healthcare organizations to start adopting.”

While still in a nascent stage for the provider community, CRM is long established in other industries as well as in the payer sector, Perlman said. To customize the CRM concept for hospitals and other providers, he said Oracle is developing a system that goes beyond the “call center” basics.

“We’ve got a model right now that has CFOs excited,” Perlman said. “What we’re doing is creating a system that personalizes interaction and intervention, offers access to information, helps facilities utilize resources, lets patients go home with the right safety net and captures new sources of revenue.”

Oracle’s new generation CRM provides an infrastructure for transforming care, enabling providers to form virtual care teams “that enable organizations to truly be a medical home and focal point for those with chronic diseases,” Perlman said. CRM tools can furnish providers with a mutual care team that collaborates on critical aspects of patient care outside of the acute care environment.