Healthcare technology has helped fuel change for decades and the trend continues at an accelerating pace. With the wide adoption of technology in our everyday lives, there is broad acceptance that tech can play an even greater role solving today’s healthcare challenges within a value-based, outcomes-oriented environment.
Telehealth, remote monitoring, and digital/connected health solutions are rapidly taking hold, and there is increasing real-world evidence these “virtual care” technologies offer many significant benefits.
Shared access + greater engagement = enhanced care coordination
We know patients with chronic conditions are at greater risk after leaving the hospital and between visits with their doctor. The impact is well documented, and this period along the care continuum has always been an Achilles heel of our healthcare delivery system. Patients may struggle to remain engaged in their care, don’t take their medications as prescribed, and revert to unhealthy behaviors. Unfortunately, what happens at home stays at home. However, as industry shifts to value-based models, it is highly motivated to activate this last mile in care delivery. After all, 95 percent of avoidable costs (more than $200 billion a year) occur between visits.
The first part of the equation is establishing greater connectivity among patients, clinicians and caregivers regardless of physical location. While disconnected stakeholders have hindered patient-centricity in the past, we live in a “mobile” society where the hospital or clinic is no longer the primary places to manage care. Being mobile also means there’s more ubiquitous, real-time connectivity available now than ever before. Cellular and wifi connectivity, and cloud-based applications offer shared access to real-time data by all stakeholders in a patient’s care and well being.
The next critical step is engagement. In order to get patients to take a more active role in their self-care and consistently practicing healthier behaviors, they need to feel like a partner with their care providers. Digital solutions give patients easy, convenient access to support resources, personalized care plans, reminder services, and self-management tools delivered virtually. Televisits offer not only convenience and connectedness but also reinforce the personal touch.
While face-to-face encounters are still the gold standard, patients gain increased peace of mind having vital resources and tools at their fingertips and knowing their support network is just a click away. And, by enabling clinicians to efficiently coordinate and interact with patients wherever they are, the entire healthcare system can make a consolidated effort to achieve the trinity of better outcomes, better care and better value.
More information + intelligent tools = actionable knowledge
Remote patient monitoring provides greater visibility to patients who are experiencing escalating symptoms, worrisome vital signs, or other potential issues at home. In the past and without this technology, care teams were essentially blind to declining conditions until the patient wound up in their office or emergency room. Remote monitoring telemetry provides a source of real-world data and insights similar to the type of oversight patients receive in a hospital setting by using powerful virtual tools to monitor, detect, assess and intervene proactively, rather than reactively, before things go south.
The key is taking the resulting data and deriving insights. Intelligent tools and artificial intelligence provide the analytical chops to sift through all this rich data. Smart rule engines can apply proven clinical protocols to identify anomalies, assess severity-based responses, provide real-time guidance, and alert appropriate care-team members. Machine learning algorithms take this to an even greater dynamic by analyzing recent trends, incorporating other big data sets, and revealing correlations that would have remained hidden otherwise.
Interoperability + Automation = workflow efficiencies
Interoperability is a key consideration when assessing new technologies. EMR interoperability is an important consideration, particularly data integration. With their cloud-based design, virtual-care solutions offer the flexibility to easily share information using a variety of options from ETL, APIs or leveraging new FHIR standards, for example. Practically speaking, EMRs are less adaptable. Though dominant in the acute setting, EMRs aren’t architected to easily incorporate dynamic, patient-generated insights because the data fields don’t exist. Virtual-care vendors with the ability to integrate with EMRs have a distinct advantage.
Integration with existing workflows is even more important. As with any technology, “building it” won’t necessarily mean “they will use it.” The tangible benefits of virtual care are realized by improving care delivery between visits, yet most of our current healthcare processes weren’t designed with this in mind. Although clinical workflows are evolving to take advantage of the opportunity, change can be disruptive and people are people.
In order to succeed, vendors must offer flexible, customizable solutions that can be easily integrated into existing workflows with minimal disruption. Automation can drive greater efficiencies and help reduce negative preconceptions. For example, remotely monitored patients will only generate alerts when situations are clinically relevant. These “smart rules” will reduce the perceived incremental effort required to monitor entire patient populations. The result: better outcomes, satisfaction and quality scores over time.
Don’t get left behind
As healthcare continues to evolve, blurring the lines of responsibility across the care continuum, we must embrace innovative approaches, enhanced skills, information sharing, and new attitudes around wellness and population care. And with this renewed focus on patient-centered care, care coordination, automation, data analytics, and quality improvement, achieving the Triple Aim is more possible than ever!
