Tag: quadruple aim

Sep 19
2018

Telehealth: The Tipping Point of Virtual Care Platform Adoption

By Lee Horner, CEO, Synzi.

Lee Horner
Lee Horner

While telehealth has been around for years, virtual care technology is emerging as a powerful tool that goes beyond the traditional telehealth model. What will it take to reach the tipping point of virtual care adoption?

To become the “next generation” of telehealth, virtual care will need to improve access, availability, application, and acceptance considerations. Virtual care is poised to be embraced by the healthcare ecosystem, helping to optimize satisfaction and outcomes for all.

Access

Timing is everything in critical care situations. Providers need instant access to specialists who can make vital diagnoses and decisions on-demand. Virtual care technology enables specialists to provide an immediate consult via video and ensure that patient questions and emerging conditions are addressed. Remote video-based consults allow a specialist to examine and diagnose the patient in real time, regardless of the specialist’s location. Virtual care will move into the mainstream as more providers (whether at a healthcare facility or home health agency) realize they can obtain timely answers, prevent return trips to the ED, and minimize readmissions. Smaller and rural hospitals will be able to strengthen their role in the community by using virtual care to access offsite, specialized staff.  The time-to-treatment will be reduced; providers will not need to waste precious minutes attempting to contact available specialists. And, specialists can provide the needed consult via video, without needing to rush to the patient’s bedside.

Availability

Many patients fail to follow up with their provider for post-discharge care. No-shows may result when a patient is unable to leave his/her residence due to a medical condition. Some patients are unable to secure reliable, timely, and/or affordable transportation to a follow-up appointment. Virtual care will improve the standard of care by providing patients with more convenient, comfortable, and cost-effective access to follow-up care. Once out of the hospital or nursing facility, a patient can participate in virtual visits on commodity devices such as tablets and smartphones.

Application

Healthcare organizations typically pilot the use of virtual care in one department, with one use-case or for a specific patient population, before rolling out the technology across a facility, health system, and/or health plan’s member base. Organizations may hesitate to expand virtual care across departments if they anticipate the implementation may be disruptive to their current processes. However, virtual care technology is designed to complement (and even automate) current workflows. Providers jump on the virtual care bandwagon when they realize that the application factors in a patient’s choice of communication devices (e.g., tablet, smartphone, and computer) and language.  Because the technology features the ability to include interpreters in a video call and also provide messaging in the patient’s primary/preferred language, more healthcare organizations will accelerate the deployment of virtual care as they can now engage all patients in their care and across any level of connectivity.

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Dec 11
2017

Effectively Engaging Patients Through the Portal

Guest post by Marie Murphy, managing director of health solutions, CTG.

Marie Murphy
Marie Murphy

Since the inception of meaningful use in 2011, healthcare organizations have been implementing technology designed to help protect and improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of patient data. Three years after the launch of meaningful use, organizations that claimed to reach Stage 2 were given patient portal requirements to help achieve the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Triple Aim Initiative: To improve the patient experience of care, improve population health, and reduce the per capita cost of healthcare.

The premise behind the Triple Aim was that if patients had better access to information about their health, along with the ability to schedule appointments and better communicate with their providers, their satisfaction and outcomes, and thus costs, would improve. While 90 percent of hospitals offer portals as a result of the requirements, actual usage by patients is stagnant, reaching a meager 15 percent. Understandably, healthcare providers are frustrated by this, and as a result of their frustration have become intent on showing the symbiotic benefits of these patient portals.

Ironically, higher performing organizations, like Kaiser Permanente, have reported much higher rates of patient portal use—upwards of 45 percent adoption by patients in some cases. This supports the case for the patient portal by demonstrating its direct correlation to satisfying Triple Aim initiatives, yet healthcare organizations still struggle to engage their patients. For many organizations, limited functionality and the use of multiple portals with multiple log-in requirements from the same hospital system are a big barrier to patient adoption. To encourage portal usage, healthcare organizations need to address the root of the problem – selecting the wrong patient portal for your organization.

Here are five keys to selecting a patient portal solution that will encourage adoption and help healthcare organizations achieve the Triple Aim:

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