In my first post in this series on Population Health, I stated that EFFECTIVE PATIENT ENGAGEMENT IS ALL THAT MATTERS. There is simply nothing more important than the patient if you are trying to deliver higher quality of care at a lower cost for a population of patients. When clinicians are dealing with many patients they generally do not have the time to effectively educate each individual patient in a manner that may help improve their wellness.
For example, patients with Diabetes require education about exercise and the kinds of foods that are suitable for someone with their condition. Likewise,there is a need to teach all patients, but especially those with comorbidities the importance of staying in compliance with their medications. The list can go on and on. 5-10 minutes with your doctor every three months will never suffice vis-à-vis the kind of information needed to support wellness.
Almost everyone is using the Internet to search for articles on their conditions, however; often they may encounter information that is inaccurate for their specific circumstances. Nurse note here... “It is always best to check with your Doctor or Nurse” – but they may not be available when the patient needs a question answered. Now we have the role of the “care manager” in population health. The healthcare industry recognizes this obvious need but is struggling how to fulfill it.
One thing is certain as we have discussed before, conversations with the patient cannot take place in a multiplicity of places (e.g. patient portals for every specialist). It has to take place in one virtual space or it won’t take place at all. But, how is this possible if every doctor wants to use their own distinct virtual space to communicate? Enter a visionary startup Docola, whose platform allows the conversations to take place in a single virtual space no matter how many clinicians are treating the patient.
Using Docola’s Platform (or something akin to it) the conversation becomes centralized across all care providers. Care coordinators are able to pull the requisite patient information from multiple EHRs and other data sources to effectively educate the patient. In fact, Docola’s Platform is, among other things, a patient education platform. Now clinicians can choose from world-class clinical content publishers the educational courses that have the potential to make an enormous contribution to patient education, while at the same time ensuring that the patient conversation takes place.
The certainty of this approach for patient education is self-evident. The reason that we have not seen this type of system receive widespread success is that the healthcare industry, despite recognizing the need and potential of this type of Platform, is struggling to develop the business model(s) that would make it work. In short, the industry is struggling mightily to remove the shackles placed upon it by Fee-For-Service. However, disruption is coming.
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