Patients are not customers, or at least I don’t want to live in a world where patients are considered customers. Customers and vendors are usually more of a symmetric relationship: price transparency, alternatives, lack of urgency. These are all characteristics of transactions that healthcare often lacks.

If the hospital is owned by private equity, the owners definitely think of the patients as customers. Doctors and nurses shouldn't, but the owners do.

The customer has more power than a patient.

I definitely want to be a customer.

Customer, user, patient...it's all the same.