Innovations Optimizing Health System Care Delivery

Innovations Optimizing Health System Care Delivery Mike McSherry, CommunityVoice

Mike McSherry, CEO and Co-Founder of Xealth.

Between labor shortages, higher costs and the ongoing disruption resulting from COVID-19 placing a major strain on hospitals, tight financial margins are expected to continue into next year. Health systems are under tremendous pressure financially, while simultaneously addressing a burned-out workforce and hearing demands to deliver a “consumer” experience to patients. Many say this is not the time for new projects. I say they are wrong.

There is no time like the present—nothing is going to change externally in any meaningful time frame, so there is little point in waiting until an arbitrary milestone is met. The leaders continue to smartly invest in technology that can optimize operations, ease pressures on care teams and bring the conveniences that patients expect, without demanding a heavy lift. Digital innovations, including automation and data from several sources, are converging to meet patients where they are to get care on their terms, whether at home, at work, during in-person visits and everywhere in between.

Here are ways that tech is improving the performance of programs for clinical and operational teams, as well as patients. Look to these trends for ways to engage with new tech and improve your employee's and client's experience:

Extending Care Teams And Optimizing Clinical Workflows

The American Medical Association (AMA) discusses physician burnout as partly the result of larger patient loads and more administrative responsibilities with changing payment and care delivery models. Others blame the amount of tools clinicians use, including EHRs and clinician decision support, balking at the thought of adding anything that increases the number of "clicks" involved in patient care. A recent Elsevier report went further and found that 69% of clinicians feel overwhelmed by the volume of data.

While there's some merit to these concerns, technology does not have to add work. In fact, it should remove some of the burden. Telehealth and virtual visits address some routine or minor appointments. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) tools track patient metrics and feed data back into the patient note so clinicians have access to the information, while patients keep on with their daily lives unless values fall outside of the set parameter. This allows practices to monitor more patients without adding more in-person appointments per day.

Automation removes any steps by the care team entirely. They can leverage patient education and other digital resources that providers currently use, automatically sending them to patients based on appointment type, diagnosis or other metrics that the health system defines. Auto enrolling patients into programs further reduces care team workloads and improves engagement with existing resources.

Layering intelligence onto automation further personalizes the experience. One example where this is helpful is with weight loss programs. A health system may automate program information for patients with a BMI over a certain threshold, but not to patients who are pregnant or who have a history of eating disorders.

Sometimes, the value seen by teams is not the one anticipated. One unexpected compliment I’ve heard was from a medical assistant excited that she no longer had to stuff envelopes to send patients for her program. It was all distributed automatically and electronically.

Enhancing The Patient Experience

Virtual care not only helps extend care teams—it also engages people with their health without having to appear in person. There's a push to meet people where they are and deliver care outside of hospitals with a growing list of examples. One example is the parent who doesn't want to bring all their children to the pediatrician because one has tonsilitis. Another is the person with diabetes who skips check-in appointments or forgets to walk the target number of daily steps, who finds an app that keeps them on target with reminders and daily journals.

Further, some appointments are more sensitive to certain patients. Some people seeking mental health care are less comfortable walking into an in-person appointment, preferring to be seen virtually. In these cases, having a digital option may mean the difference in seeking care at all.

Education is also an area full of potential. Leveraging technology, patients receive the information they need about their condition, how to prepare for a procedure or care for a loved one, in a way that is accessible, shareable and easy to reference later.

At the end of the day, our experience shows that people want flexibility. Knowing they have options to have their care delivered in a way that matches their needs makes them feel connected to their care teams.

Improving Operational Performance

While clinicians and patients receive the most attention, as they should, a health system can’t deliver any care without being financially strong. Digital health helps reduce appointment no-shows, lower hospital readmissions through home-based monitoring, and ensure patients arrive to procedures having completed the needed preparation, including not eating after midnight or washing with an anti-bacterial soap that morning. Prepared patients reduce the chance of last-minute procedure rescheduling.

Technology can optimize the return achieved from earlier investments by making them easy to use. This includes increased sign-up and utilization of current digital apps and the health system’s patient portal—and every health system I talk with has at least one.

We’ve seen our clients use digital databases to identify target patient populations and invite qualifying patients to participate in research initiatives faster and cheaper than they could previously. Enrolling patients faster reduces the length of time required to conduct research and saves costs around this stage.

Health systems have numerous assets and programs currently in use across disjointed systems and clinical areas. Investing in technology that can centralize, automate and otherwise bring new life into existing tools sets organizations up for better returns both near and long term.

Conclusion

There are no easy answers or quick wins for healthcare systems that are caught in the classic “Innovator’s Dilemma.” They can lose by failing to embrace the technology that is commonplace with new entrants—retailers and big tech. Health systems that win will be those that are not afraid to disrupt themselves by taking a strategic, coordinated approach to using digital health to meet the expectations—and demands—of both patients and their care teams.

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