Tag: improving patient outcomes

How Telehealth Is Making Care More Accessible In Remote Regions of the US

AAFP to FCC: Improve Rural Telehealth to Support Primary Care

By Rahul Varshneya, founder and president, Arkenea.

Rural communities, often located amid isolated yet beautiful landscapes, are a defining feature of much of the United States of America. But those same landscapes can, at times, make it arduous for people to gain access to something as basic as a healthcare facility.

In these regions, patients are often tens of hundreds of miles from the location of their nearest caregiver. Community hospitals, with limited budgets and low volumes, generally don’t have specialists. And even if they do, there are too few to ensure constant coverage.

Telehealth is transforming these situations to everyone’s advantage. 

A recent study of Intermountain’s neonatal telehealth program evaluated the effect of video-assisted resuscitation on the transfer of newborns from eight community hospitals to newborn ICUs in Level 3 trauma centers. The service produced a 29.4% reduction in a newborn’s odds of being transferred, which corresponds annually to 67 fewer transfers — and estimated savings of $1.2 million for affected families.

By leveraging telehealth, patients can receive expert treatment locally without the added cost and risk of transfer to a bigger hospital. Local hospitals retain vital revenue and ameliorate their services. Community members get better care that’s based on evidence-based best practices. Health care is far better overall.

In this piece, we will be looking at a few ways telehealth is improving patient experiences and making care more accessible in remote regions of the United States.

1) Bringing Patients and Care Providers Closer for Better Outcomes

Most patients in the rural or suburban settings of the southwest, like the ones living in the remote terrains of Nevada, lack the necessary resources to travel to a healthcare facility. 

Even for patients living in the urban areas, public transportation can be grueling and tedious. Less mobile or older patients might also not always have family or acquaintances who can be their caretaker and take them for frequent clinical visits. 

Telemedicine can help such patients feel more independent. One study found that the use of a specific home-telemedicine strategy for care coordination improved functional independence in non-institutionalized veterans with chronic conditions.

Not only does telemedicine adoption help patients manage their conditions, it is equally beneficial for healthcare providers too.

Hospitals, clinics, public health offices and private practice healthcare providers in the southwest have been receiving free technical assistance for implementing or expanding their current telemedicine programs from various government authorities for quite some time now.

Since laws governing telehealth and reimbursement greatly differ by state, various Telehealth Research Centers (TRCs) spread across the country help providers discover the latest telemedicine and telehealth laws and regulations that apply in the state where the provider’s practice is based.

TRCs are also helping providers – generally free of charge – in developing a business model for telehealth in their healthcare setting, selecting the appropriate telemedicine platform as well as equipment, and providing education to patients alike on how to leverage telemedicine technologies to improve health outcomes and access to healthcare services.

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The Shift to Patient-Centric Care and the Implications of Value-Based Medicine

Guest post by Brian Irwin, VP of Strategy, SHYFT Analytics.

Brian Irwin
Brian Irwin

The days of life science companies focusing on physicians and medical professionals as their main “customers” are numbered. Larger healthcare market trends, better access to real world data and increasing costs are driving the shift to a new customer – the patient.

As total spending on medicines globally reaches the $1 trillion level annually, payers are, not surprisingly, placing greater emphasis on ensuring they are receiving value for their investments. Payers are bringing closer scrutiny to all parts of the healthcare system they are funding. Patients, too, are spending more in today’s system and in turn are changing their expectations about value and outcomes. As a result, we are seeing a new focus on real world evidence as payers and patients seek proof that the medicines are contributing to improved patient outcomes, reduction in hospital admissions or re-admissions, and more efficient use of resources.

In response, life science companies are seeking new and more effective ways to leverage data and analytics across the clinical-commercial continuum and to adapt their go-to-market strategies to reflect their focus on patient outcomes. Capturing results-oriented data and making it usable is critical for this new model to work and for the patient to receive the most appropriate care.

With this shift to outcomes-based results and real world evidence, many questions arise around the data and analytics. Who defines “value” and what does success look like? Is it long-term value or short-term results? Additionally, how should this information be distributed to and evaluated by the various stakeholders? How do we achieve a level of consistency when data sources are not yet fully interoperable?

As the pharma industry starts to work through the answers to these questions and begins to redefine go-to-market strategies and commercial models, effective utilization of data and analytics will prove to be one of the greatest competitive advantages.

Defining Value in the New Healthcare Era

This focus on patient outcomes has broader implications for the industry with data sources now being aligned with the patient to enable decisions across the enterprise including drug development, market access, and commercial performance.

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