The 21st-Century Service Experience

My wife’s glass mixing bowl—the one she uses with her cherished stand mixer—cracked. Being her knight in shining armor, or at least wanting to appear as such, I immediately got to work getting her a new one. There were many available on Amazon.com from a variety of companies, but I found a brand-name mixing bowl, not some cheap knockoff, on Walmart’s website for a much lower price. I thought about rushing out that evening to the local Walmart store to pick it up, but their website said they would deliver it the next day. Really? Next day? I was placing my order at 11 pm. Sure enough, the new mixing bowl arrived at my door the next morning, less than 12 hours after I placed the order.

It’s a GREAT time to be alive. The service experience can be extraordinary. But then again, people get used to having high expectations, including our patients. And perhaps they should have lofty expectations considering how much they are paying for medical care. Between taxes, health insurance premiums, employer contributions, and out-of-pocket costs, patients may be shelling out roughly the equivalent of a lease payment on a brand-new BMW. Is it not reasonable for them to expect BMW quality from their health care, too?

We know you are committed to giving your patients exceptional dermatologic care, and The Dermatologist aims to cover all those things that you need to achieve this aim. In this issue, we feature emerging topics such as the multidimensional disease burden of atopic dermatitis, recap this year’s rosacea research highlights, and conclude our 3-part series on lesser-known psoriasis comorbidities to help keep you abreast of advances in dermatology. And our end-of-the-year cover story offers 10 tips for aspiring writers to contribute to our field’s collective knowledge by publishing articles in academic journals. If we have been missing anything, please let us know at dermeditor@hmpglobal.com. Just as our patients expect and deserve first-rate care, you deserve quality content from us in exchange for the time you put into reading our magazine. As we close out 2022, we want you to know that we appreciate you!