At the beginning of 2020, healthcare leaders from payers to providers to technical service providers found themselves at a crossroads—either innovating or unable to care for patients. I recently had the honor to participate in a virtual roundtable with a group of healthcare leaders to discuss the transformation of patient care, participation, and outreach. The group focuses on the global crisis of the pandemic, which brings an era of innovation and technological solutions and services, thereby realizing new care models. The pandemic has changed minds and helped create new solutions to improve how and where patients get care, whether through smartphone-based transportation apps and healthy meal delivery or remote patient monitoring.
Revisiting virtual care
The industry quickly realized that telecare opportunities could help support the continuity of care.McKinsey Estimated to be up to 250 billion U.S. dollars US health care spending may shift to virtual or virtual care, but consumers and clinicians need to continue to adopt and accelerate the redesign of care coordination.this way Improve patient experience, Which helps to alleviate social health factors and enhance consumers’ perception of health care services.
At the same time, the rapid outbreak of the pandemic quickly revealed the urgent needs of underserved people. Many people try to keep their homes and jobs, and health may be the last thing they care about. This is usually partly due to socioeconomic factors.
this Caesars Family Foundation It is estimated that during the pandemic, nearly one in five adults delayed nursing care due to social determinants of health (SDoH). Although SDoH was the focus of the health industry before the pandemic, Covid-19 Exacerbate these challenges In many groups, and expose them in a direct way.
When patients cannot get the care they need, providers will find new and innovative ways to connect with them at home through telemedicine and telecare, but connectivity and technology still pose challenges for many patient groups.
Patients need better and more consistent care and technology. In fact, when measuring telemedicine trends, CDC report It was found that certain geographic areas of the country did not adopt telecare as quickly as they acquired the required technology.
A leader of our team pointed out that although the telemedicine adoption rate in his organization has increased by more than 8,000%, doctors spend most of their time discussing how the technology works with patients, rather than treating patients. Although technology is often portrayed as a great equalizer, the pandemic clearly shows that this is not always the case.
Nonetheless, by meeting with patients in situ, payers and providers can also begin to address obvious health disparities and inequalities within the system by helping those who do not have the technology to support better care, well-being, and improved healthcare experience .
Value-based care and pandemic
Most healthcare depends on the current and future regulatory and payer environment. Although this situation is constantly changing, the healthcare industry—payers and providers—continues to explore new ways to improve the healthcare experience.
For example, value-based care plans have been discussed for many years.Nevertheless, as the National Buyers Alliance learned in a meeting National survey, 6 out of 10 employers are considering value-based healthcare, mainly because of the pandemic.As the survey showed, the concept Gain traction In the pocket, but there has not yet been a comprehensive and comprehensive shift from fee-for-service.
Even with major innovations, this is still an ongoing challenge. If patients (and our healthcare system) still need virtual care, then the industry will have to meet their needs long after the pandemic, and it is important to find innovative ways to reimburse doctors for their activities.
Many panelists agreed that in order to maintain innovation and change, we must find new ways to better implement SDoH, while increasing incentives for providers to increase value and quantity, even for virtual care. This shift has also greatly affected the patient care process, thereby affecting the medical quality measurement standards.
Throughout the discussion, the organizations and leaders participating in the group stated that they learned new and innovative methods to adapt and operate technology during the pandemic.
Technology for good
The group discussed many updates and innovative technologies in medical services, such as artificial intelligence (AI). Healthcare providers and payers can use artificial intelligence to support predictive results and increase the participation of members and patients.As stated in a recent report American Association for the Advancement of Science, The pandemic provides a unique opportunity to prove that artificial intelligence can be used to benefit all mankind, and artificial intelligence developers have seized this moment. Even so, artificial intelligence is only part of the healthcare puzzle, not a panacea. Artificial intelligence, or any technology related to this, is just a way to drive specific results.
Everyone in the group agrees that the pandemic accelerates the new evolution of innovation and will ultimately enhance the factors that the healthcare industry is striving to improve, such as addressing SDoH, bedside care clinical insights, and a better patient experience.
We can build a system together so that people can get care when, where and how they want it. The pandemic is unlikely to be the culprit in driving innovation. However, the future of leveraging this continuous innovation depends on us.
Photo credit: Andrii Shyp, Getty Images
