Environmental Scan: Drivers of change in health care
Dr. Schulman’s approach to the potential of patient misinformation is to initiate almost all discussions with patients with the question “Have your read or seen anything about this condition?” He said, “It is rare for patients to answer negatively. And listening to them speak about their understanding of their disease provides me with invaluable information about how the remainder of our visit should be spent. Do we need to correct misunderstandings? Are there gaps in the explanation that I can fill? Can we move directly into a conversation about treatment options? Can I provide you with some additional resources that might help to further your knowledge about the condition?”
Generational factors will play a big role in health-care demand and delivery. Health-care companies are already building lower cost delivery models to capture the millennial market.4 Cost-saving digital tools and virtual contacts are currently most commonly used by younger patients.5 Physicians need to understand and be a part of this trend, Dr. Schulman argued. “We should embrace telemedicine and mobile applications to collect data from the patients in their day-to-day lives. While insurance coverage of telemedicine is far from universal at the moment, and the reliability of mobile applications is highly variable, we know that a growing number of our patients are already relying on their digital devices to manage their health. In much the same way that we will need to help patient evaluate online information, we should work with our national societies to support the creation of tools that will allow us to collect data in the home environment in a more robust and reliable fashion.”
The proportion of the US population over the age of 65 is increasing yearly.6 Six out of 10 Americans live with a chronic illness, such as heart disease or diabetes. These and other chronic diseases are the leading drivers of the $3.3 billion annual health-care costs.7 Cost containment for these older patients and those with chronic illness will involve a focus on quality and outcomes data, a drive to deliver treatment in lower cost outpatient settings, and an acceleration of the adoption of value-based models currently underway.8
Taken together, these trends will mean a growing digital interface between physician and patient, a more active consumer-patient, and the availability of a vast array of new tools to access and manage health-care data.
- Delivery of procedures and services will trend from physicians to other members of the health-care team and to lower cost, outpatient settings.9
- Health-care systems will ramp up investment in products and services that improve outcomes and cost effectiveness.10
- Increased regulatory requirements and new payment models mean an ever-growing utilization of information technology by providers to fulfill data imperatives.11
- Physicians will have an increased need for tools that prioritize costs and outcomes data at the point of care.12
- Integration of data from new technologies will touch every aspect of health-care delivery with the objective of improving outcomes and, in turn, reducing costs.13
- Changing consumer attitudes toward delivery of care will be based on a growing familiarity of patients with a digital or virtual interface with providers, facility with health-care apps, and preference for a menu of options for health-care delivery.14
Dr. Schulman concluded, “We can no more expect our patients to ignore the full panoply of medical information on the internet and digital tools on their mobile devices than we can tell the tide not to come in. The die is cast; this is the world within which we must ply our trade. By identifying best practices and sharing our successes, we can come through this revolution better for the experience.”
