For the past three years, I have written and reported extensively on digital and mobile healthcare. Now, here is some personal perspective.

Yes, it works, and no it wasn’t an Amazon-like experience. I live in a town 40 miles west of Chicago, and that city is served very nicely by at least half a dozen big regional health systems—Northwestern Medical, Rush University Medical, Edward-Elmhurst Health, Advocate Healthcare and a few others. Some of the health systems near me offer fairly advanced self-service digital tools and others not so much. But Naperville, where I live, is a pretty competitive healthcare market, as is the greater Chicago metropolitan market.

Most of the major Chicago health systems are working to roll out or update their digital tool box with faster portal access, telehealth for acute care, online doctor appointment scheduling, checking out walk-in clinics and emergency room wait times, among other features. Checking procedure pricing online is limited at a couple of health systems, but that convenience is still a long way off for most of the hospitals.

Over the weekend I was hit by a pretty bad cold. In times past, I would drag myself out of the house, drive to the walk-in clinic and then cool my heels sitting around the waiting room and then the exam room until it was my time in the queue to see the physician. But this past Sunday, I gave Northwestern’s online appointment scheduling a try.

It’s been around for about 18 months, but this was the first instance I had to give it a try. The process was pretty convenient. I logged on to their website, clicked on the link for walk-in clinics and availability and made an appointment at an urgent care place about 12 minutes from where I live. The auto responder sent me not one but five reminders—three e-mails and two text messages (in case I forgot, I suppose).

It was Sunday morning and there was hardly anyone there, so they waved me right to the sign-in desk. Since I had used this walk-in location several times before and my primary doctor was part of the Northwestern network, most of my registration information was pre-populated and sign in was easy. They also had my time flagged as an online appointment.

Now is where digital healthcare ends and conventional medical care—and waiting—begins. They walked me back pretty quick, took an oral history (yes, I still feel safe at home), did a check of the vitals and then sat by myself in the exam room for 15 minutes waiting for the physician. When she did finally come, she checked me out, prescribed some stronger cough and sneezing medication and left to finish the paperwork.

Here’s where more digital (somewhat) technology comes back in. Normally, when I finish up the appointment, they send the prescription to the Walgreens across the parking lot, I walk over and then wait 30 to 45 minutes for the pharmacist to fill the order. I usually wait because it’s easier to hang round as opposed to driving all the way home.

This time, however, I opted not to use Walgreens. Instead, I used the vending machine in the waiting room. As the provider was writing up the order and placing the order into their Epic electronic health records system, the EHR generated a code for the prescription. When I got the code along with my other documents, I used the code to begin the transaction at the drug dispensing machine, which verified the prescription, printed the label and dispensed the medication. I only had to enter my debit card number, pay my $19 for the generic prescription cold medicine I was picking up and get the drugs from the dispenser.

Here’s the takeaway from all of this: treatment via digital healthcare saved me time. Without any technology, leaving the house, going through the appointment, hanging around Walgreens and then going home and back to bed (or the easy chair and chicken soup) is at least a two-hour and sometimes three-hour process.

By using online appointment scheduling and the drug dispensing machine, I was there and back in 90 minutes. You may be asking why go into see the doc at all? Why not just make it a telehealth visit? The answer is my choice. In this case, I wasn’t sure if it was just a cold because the cough was getting very consistent and I was growing a tad concerned. So, in this instance, I wanted to get checked out in person.

Since the digital doctor would write the prescription for pickup from the nearby Walgreens, it still would have been necessary to get out of the house anyway. Also, the telehealth visit may have saved some costs for Northwestern Medical and UnitedHealth, my family’s carrier; it was still a $40 co-pay either way to me. So, combining my personal preference with the fact that medicine is still hands-on, I opted for the walk-in visit.

So, is using digital healthcare as easy as shopping on Amazon.com? The answer is no. It also shouldn’t be because we are talking about two wholly different online experiences. A digital health visit is a much more complicated transaction than making a purchase on Amazon. But the user experience should be every bit as easy with digital health tools as it is on Amazon.

Is it? Not yet. Northwestern has now sent me two texts and one e-mail asking me for my level of satisfaction with the doctor visit. My reply: not even close to an Amazon user experience but moving in the right direction.

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