Tag: Keith Algozzine

Digital Solutions Key To Enhanced Population Health Strategies and Improved Care

Keith Algozzine

By Keith Algozzine, PA-C, CEO, UCM Digital Health

 An essential part of being a healthcare provider, in any capacity, is understanding population health management. This discipline offers a window into the health of a selected population and helps providers understand how a particular demographic is influenced through key indicators such as geography, genetics, medical history, and socioeconomic factors.

In addition to narrowing the focus on specific clinical issues, applying population health strategies can help to address inequities and improve health outcomes.

Putting population health strategies into practice is faced with numerous inherent systemic challenges.

Additionally, looming over the entire healthcare industry is the growing physician shortage and the fact that hospital employment is expected to decrease by almost 96,000 employees in about two years.

Digital solutions are emerging as a much-needed approach to maximize the utilization of available resources, meet the growing need to meet patients in a virtual setting, and streamline demanding workflow. They can streamline implementation and enable quicker, easier outreach to targeted populations. They can enable improved patient care and community outreach. Digital solutions can also support data integration and interoperability for a more complete view of the patient, can assist with targeted patient outreach, and can allow results and outcomes to be monitored and tracked.

Benefitting patients, providers, and the community

Regardless of how a healthcare organization addresses population health strategies, at its core, it involves collaboration between leaders in healthcare and the community. Factors that make up the complete picture of individual and population health span health behaviors, for example, tobacco use, diet and exercise, and alcohol and drug use as well as access to care and quality of care.

Organizations need be able to prioritize, process, and integrate a multitude of data sources, data sources to provide better transparency into the population’s health history and health journey. This transparency helps better manage networks, risks, opportunities, and strategies to improve health efficiently.

Effective population health strategies will allow for better patient management and care by enhancing communication with the patient, coordinating care, lowering health and other risks, and processing and aggregating data. The end goal for population health is to enhance the outcomes and quality of care while managing costs. Digital solutions and technologies are emerging as valuable tools to make this a reality.

Now an integral part of our daily lives, digital technology connects every aspect of our world. Innovation, especially in the digital ecosystem, is occurring rapidly. Nevertheless, there is an immense opportunity to improve various populations’ well-being through digital health solutions.

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Digital Innovation Spurs Seamless Healthcare Engagement

Keith Algozzine

By Keith Algozzine, co-founder and CEO, UCM Digital Health.

An unexpected side effect of the pandemic is how the health industry quickly realized the extraordinary advantages stemming from the rapid adoption of advanced, end-to-end telehealth solutions.

In 2020, when doctors’ offices, hospitals, and other nonessential places were closed, physicians and their patients began to use telehealth solutions at a pace never seen before and not only discovered their ease and convenience, but the impact it had on their overall bottom lines.

To illustrate this point, and according to Healthcare IT News, adopting Digital health services has the potential to save $46 billion a year in health spending. Furthermore, a recent survey from the COVID-19 Health Care Coalition Telehealth Workgroup revealed that 67% of patients saw lower costs with their telehealth visits compared to in-person visits. In addition, 78% of patients believed their telehealth visit addressed their health concerns. Innovative telehealth solutions can save patients, providers, and hospitals time and money.

Now, as the pandemic hopefully continues to subside—decreased cases and providers’ offices open to in-person visits—patients will have greater freedom on doctor visits and medical care. They can schedule an appointment through traditional avenues, delve into the time-consuming check-in process via paperwork, forms, and waiting rooms, or streamline the process from familiar home surroundings with the ease and convenience of telehealth services.

Telehealth digital front doors provide patients with a seamless health journey via an array of enhanced services such as asynchronous or synchronous visits, automated symptom checkers, search tools, and even intelligent chatbots that can assist a patient in determining the best source of care based on simple question and answer surveys. Doctors can then respond by using the same platforms, creating and beginning a treatment plan for the patient.

By using a digital front door, logistics can be streamlined and made efficient by linking patients, their providers, payers, hospital systems, and electronic health records into a single connected ecosystem.

In addition, telehealth maximizes provider logistics and care to patients during moments of crisis and emergency.

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