Features Editor
Every day at the Health Management Technology office I am subjected to an endless stream of email. As I slog through the merger announcements, glorified product ads, and interview requests, I notice a telling trend with how many of those promoting the healthcare industry view their priorities.
For every email that speaks of lives saved by some new product, there are at least a dozen others that proudly boast cash savings, leaving patient outcomes to seem like some ancillary benefit – you know, just in case any of us “touchy-feely” people happen to be reading.
Before you think I’m about to ramble on like the late Andy Rooney, I promise my anecdote ends there. All the same, this observation is interesting to consider as we step deeper into the era of the Affordable Care Act, one that seems to promise better measures of patient outcomes and the switch to healthcare models where revenue is generated by getting results, not merely for rendering services.
And that’s exactly what the accountable care model of healthcare services is supposed to do – it puts the burden on providers to actually produce healthier people. If a provider wants to maximize the amount of money they take in, they need to keep patients out of hospital rooms and actually fix whatever is ailing them.
Admittedly, this isn’t working quite as intended – partially due to bureaucratic red tape that measures process more than outcome – but at least it’s a step in the right direction. For an industry that is specifically tasked with keeping a populace healthy, it seems rational to have counter-forces to profits in place to encourage providers to show actual results if they want to make the most money.
Accountable care programs are one way to do this, but while the jury is busy deliberating their effectiveness, we could look elsewhere for answers. If the primary goal is to have a world with more healthy people (some depressing numbers are saying we have fewer), and to reduce costs to make them affordable, it’s technology that may hold the answer.
Visionaries are putting power in the hands of the patients themselves – the power to monitor their health, to diagnose, prevent, and even treat a myriad of conditions. Telehealth is opening a door for treatment to happen from your couch, while some amazing new apps are running algorithms that can manage certain disorders, keeping patients out of a doctor’s office completely.
Moreso than accountable care programs, healthcare technology is in its infancy. Every year we are seeing new ideas that make last year’s breakthrough seem obsolete. Granted, it’s still idealistic to imagine a world where people are kept healthy entirely by tech, but we are moving in that direction. The technology is already to a point where providers should see telehealth innovations and mobile apps as serious competition that threatens their bottom line, which is one of those necessary counter-forces that will encourage better results. If I can see a doctor virtually from my home and he can fix my problem, why on earth would I ever need to rack up an expensive hospital bill ever again?
Inevitably, it seems outcome-based care is coming, and just maybe it’s telehealth and mobile health that will lead the way. While accountable care models may not presently make business sense across the board from a revenue standpoint, it seems that the demand for healthy people is something that just won’t go away. The optimist inside me believes technology will hand people the freedom to produce their own outcomes – and for me, that’s an encouraging thought.
