During a recent medical episode, which required visits to various divisions of my local healthcare system, I was once again reminded of how much patient behavior can deviate from a transactional and short-term utility-seeking model. Many patients were apparently fine to wait for better parts of an hour to see their preferred specialist and did not display outward signs of agitation. The literature has documented that a majority of patients are willing to forgive scheduling and other operational errors, and a remarkably small percentage of patients litigate medical errors. More strikingly, most patients are willing to follow recommendations of their clinicians to try new therapies, devices, and medical procedures, with little more than surface-level knowledge of the logic behind these recommendations (1).

These patient behaviors are not simply a result of patient inertia, satisfaction, or even mere patient trust. They result from something even more valuable and rare that some healthcare organizations, including clinicians subsumed within them, have built with their patients: a robust stock of relational slack.

Economist Birger Wernerfelt noted in his highly-cited paper that “a firm’s resources at a given time could be defined as those (tangible and intangible) assets which are tied semi-permanently to the firm.” Social capital is one such intangible resource that accrues........

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