Categories

Hospital at Home: Prospects and Challenges, and Learnings from Best Buy Health

With the urgent need to identify more efficient and lower-cost health care delivery models, we look to growing evidence for digital health technologies that support the Hospital at Home (HaH) model, considered in a new review article published in late February in npj Digital Medicine, The hospital at home in the USA: current status and future prospects. Clinicians from Scripps Research and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine collaborated on this work, calling out the relatively fast adoption of HaH programs during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In some parts of the world, such as Australia and Norway, “in-person at-home

 

Ethics for AI in Health – A View From The World Health Organization

For health care, AI can benefit diagnosis and clinical care, address paperwork and bureaucratic duplication and waste, accelerate scientific research, and personalize health care direct-to-patients and -caregivers. On the downside, risks of AI in health care can involve incomplete or false diagnoses, inaccuracies and errors in cleaning up paperwork, exacerbate differential access to scientific knowledge, and exacerbate health disparities, explained in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report, Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health.             WHO has released guidance on the use of large multi-modal models (LMMs) in health care which detail 40+ recommendations for

 

Consumers’ Growing Use of Portals and Apps: People Embracing Their Patient Journeys

The latest read from ONC, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, tells a story about patients’ growing use of online portals, medical records, and smartphone apps to access personal health information. We now have solid evidence empowering us to disagree with Col, Nathan Jessup, the iconic character played by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, who responded to Tom Cruise’s Lt. Kaffee’s demand for “the truth” as the villainous Colonel raged, “You can’t handle the truth.” But ONC data belies that: as it happens, patients can handle the truth, as we learn that 9 in 10

 

The Retail Health Battle Royale in the U.S. – A Week-Long Brainstorm, Day 3 of 5 – Apple as “Intelligent Health Guardian”

Apple wants to be your “intelligent guardian for health,” based on a 60-page paper shepherded by Jeff Williams, the company’s Chief Operating Officer.             Published last week, the paper is one of the big signals trumpeted this U.S. summer marked by the BA.5 omicron subvariant of SARS-CoV-2, inflation pressures on our household budgets, social/political tensions, and hot-hot weather. I’m folding the report into my coverage this week on the Retail Health Battle Royale today, Day 3 of my week-long series updating us on the health/care ecosystem. For the previous two days’ posts, see… Day 1

 

Love and Health: The Education of Abner Mason, SameSky Health

It felt super appropriate that I met up with Abner Mason, Founder of SameSky Health, on Valentine’s Day 2022. While we conversed via Zoom, Abner’s positive energy vibrated over the 5,600 miles between him in LA County and me in Brussels, Belgium – nine hours apart, but in the proverbial same room in the conversation. My initial ask of Abner was to discuss the re-branding of ConsejoSano to SameSky Health, but I first wanted to hear the man’s origin story. And that, you will learn, has everything to do with loving parents, the power of education from a young age,

 

The Reluctance of Consumers to Share Personal Information – The Challenge of Data for Health “Blurring”

Health is the cornerstone to our core needs, thereby the cornerstone to trust.” This was one lens on the latest 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer published earlier this month. But trust is in short supply when it comes to consumers openness to share their personal information we learn through a new study published in JAMA, Consumer Willingness to Share Personal Digital Information for Health-Related Uses. For some historical context, the authors (all affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania [medical school or Wharton (business school)] start with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act which served up privacy protections based on

 

“Complexity is Profitable” in U.S. Healthcare – How to Save a Quarter-Trillion Dollars

In the U.S., “Health care is complicated because complexity is profitable.” So explain Bob Kocher, MD, and Anuraag Chigurupati, in a viewpoint on Economic Incentives for Administrative Simplification, published this week in JAMA. Dr. Kocher, a physician who is a venture capitalist, and Chigurupati, head of member experience at Devoted Health, explain the misaligned incentives that impede progress in reducing administrative spending. This essay joins two others in the October 20, 2021 issue of JAMA which highlight administrative spending in American health care: Administrative Simplification and the Potential for Saving a Quarter-Trillion Dollars in Health Care by Nikhil Sahni, Brandon

 

Can the U.S. Improve Health System Performance with Digital Health Tools? Pondering A Big Question for #HIMSS21

Simply put, is the equation, “Spend more, get less” a sustainable business model? Of course not. But that’s the simple math on U.S. health care spending and what comes from it, according to Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly, a perennial report from The Commonwealth Fund that compares health system performance across eleven developed countries. The first table details the metrics that the Fund compares across the eleven peer nations, which included Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The metrics compared were access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity,

 

Americans Grew Digital Health-Data Muscles in the Pandemic – New Insights from the Pew Charitable Trusts

“Most Americans clearly recognize the potential benefits that improved health IT can offer, and they want this transformation of the health care system to continue,” the Pew Charitable Trusts research concludes in Most Americans Want to Share and Access More Digital Health Data. The Pew team surveyed 1,213 adults ages 18 and over in June and July 2020, interviewing in English and Spanish. As digital health industry stakeholders will be convening at the 2021 annual HIMSS conference in Las Vegas and digitally, this report is well-timed to give us a level-set on just “where” U.S. health citizens are with respect to

 

Post-Pandemic, U.S. Healthcare is Entering a “Provide More Care For Less” Era – Pondering PwC’s 2022 Forecast

In the COVID-19 pandemic, health care spending in the U.S. increased by a relatively low 6.0% in 2020. This year, medical cost trend will rise by 7.0%, expected to decline a bit in 2022 according to the annual study from PwC Health Research Institute, Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers 2022. What’s “behind these numbers” are factors that will increase medical spending (the “inflators” in PwC speak) and the “deflators” that lower costs. Looking around the future corner, the inflators are expected to be: A COVID-19 “hangover,” leading to increased health care services utilization Preparations for the next pandemic, and

 

The ROI on Virtual Care – Thinking About Value and Future Prospects With the AMA

When a new technology or product starts to get used in a market, it follows a diffusion curve whose slope depends on the pace of adoption in that market. For telehealth, that S-curve has had a very long and fairly flat front-end of the “S” followed by a hockey stick trajectory in March and April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was an exogenous shock to in-person health care delivery. The first chart from the CDC illustrates that dramatic growth in the use of telehealth ratcheting up since the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in the U.S. Virtual care has

 

Nurses Hacking for Health and Compassionomics

The hearts and minds of nurses are fertile and inspirational sources and engines for health care innovation. This past weekend, and for the second time, I had the privilege and opportunity to be a panelist for the perennial hackathon meet-up of Nurse Hack 4 Health, sponsored by Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Sonsiel, and DevUp. This round, the hackathon attracted hundreds of nurses from at least 20 countries and 30 U.S. states. Even a few students attended, a growing trend as academia recognizes the shortage of workers trained to solve thorny problems of the world. In health care, right here, right

 

Ten Forces Shaping Health Care in 2021: A View from CVS Health

Expanding omni-channel, data-driven, cost-effective health care in the community, tailoring that care, and attending to mental health paint the picture of health through the lens of CVS Health. The company published the Health Trends Report 2021 today, calling out ten forces shaping health care this year. Those themes are, The Year of the Pharmacist The Next Step Forward in Cardiac Care Cancer Needs a Better Roadmap The EHR Hits Its Stride The Mental Health Shadow of COVID-19 Tailor Care to the Older Patient More Agents that Predict Disease Paying for the New Medical Miracle Virtual Care Goes Mainstream, and Diabetes

 

How COVID-19 Mobilized Participatory Health and the Importance of “Correct” Personal Health Records

explained in a new report from EY co-sponsored by the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the AHA Center for Health Innovation. Digital Transformation – Anywhere Care envisions “health care with no address, or bringing care to the consumer or patient rather than expecting the patient to go to the hospital” as a “vital sign” of health care’s changes going into the new year of 2021. COVID-19 accelerated a movement in which I’ve been involved for over a decade, known as “participatory health.” In its early phase in the U.S., Dr. Tom Ferguson identified the emerging role of the internet in

 

Consumers’ Embrace of Digital Health Tech Stalls, and Privacy Concerns Prevail – Accenture’s 2020 Research

Millions of dollars and developers’ time have been invested in conceiving and making digital health tools. Yet with that bullish supply side of digital health,  there was a marked decline in peoples’ use of them in the past two years, found by Accenture in their latest health consumer survey, Digital is Transforming Health, So Why is Consumer Adoption Stalling? Use of mobile apps to track personal health activity fell from nearly 1 in 2 consumers to 1 in 3. Use of wearable tech nearly halved, from 33% to 18%, between 2018 and 2020. Some, but not necessarily a majority, of

 

Why CTA’s Shepherding AI Is Important for Re-Imagining Healthcare

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), collaborating with industry stakeholders, has ushered in a standard for artificial intelligence in health care.   CTA is the membership organization for companies that innovate, manufacture and market consumer-facing tech like big-screen TVs, slick new autos, video games and voice assistants. So what’s an organization like CTA doing with AI and health care? Let me connect the dots. Check out this graphic taken from my book, HealthConsuming: From Health Consumer to Health Citizen. This shows the ten categories of tech I revisit each year at CES, CTA’s annual mega-conference of new-new things in consumer electronics

 

Most Workers and their Employers Want to Receive Digital Healthcare On-Demand

Most employers and their workers see the benefits of digital health in helping make health care more accessible and lower-cost, according to survey research published in Health on Demand from Mercer Marsh Benefits. Interestingly, more workers living in developing countries are keener on going digital for health than people working in wealthier nations. Mercer’s study was global, analyzing companies and their employees in both mature and growth economies around the world. In total, Mercer interviewed 16,564 workers and 1,300 senior decision makers in companies. The U.S. sample size was 2,051 employees and 100 decision makers. There’s a treasure trove of insights

 

Physicians Lean In to Digital Health, Especially Telehealth and Remote Monitoring

More U.S. doctors are using digital health tools in patient care, with quickening adoption of telehealth and remote monitoring technology, according to a study from the American Medical Association (AMA). This survey, conducted in 2019 among 1,359 U.S. physicians, follows up AMA’s research conducted in 2016 and largely reflects the original questionnaire to be able to understand real changes among doctors’ use of tech in practice. As part of this rigorous study design, AMA used particular definitions for the seven tools the study gauged: remote monitoring for efficiency, remote monitoring and management for improved care, clinical decision support, patient engagement,

 

Physicians in America – Too Many Burned Out, Depressed, and Not Getting Support

Some one in three physicians is burned out, according to the Medscape’s National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report. The subtitle, “The Generational Divide,” tells a bit part of the subtext of this annual report that’s always jarring and impactful for both its raw numbers and implications for both patient care and the larger health care system in America. Nearly 1 in 2 physicians in Generation X, those people born between 1965 and 1979, feel burned out compared with roughly 4 in 10 doctors who are Millennials or Boomers. Furthermore, many more women than men physicians feel burned out: 48% of

 

Dr. Roboto? Stanford Medicine Foresees Digital Doctors “Maturing”

Physicians are evolving as digital doctors, embracing the growing role of data generated in electronic health records as well as through their patients using wearable technologies and mobile health apps downloaded in ubiquitous smartphones, described in The Rise of the Data-Driven Physician, a 2020 Health Trends Report from Stanford Medicine Stanford Medicine interviewed 523 physicians and 210 medical students and residents in September and October 2019 to assess clinicians’ perspectives on digital health topics for this study. The study title citing the “data-driven physician” is based on the key survey finding that doctors are preparing to embrace data, from both traditional

 

A Health Future with Lyft and Uber as Patient Data Stewards: Rock Health’s 2019 Consumer Survey

Patients searching online for health information and health care provider reviews is mainstream in 2019.  Digital health tracking is now adopted by 4 in 10 U.S. consumers. Rock Health’s Digital Health Consumer Adoption Report for 2019 was developed in collaboration with the Stanford Medicine Center for Digital Health. Rock Health’s research has tracked peoples’ use of telemedicine, wearable technology, digital health tracking, and online health information since 2015, and the results this round show relative flattening of adoption across these various tools. Rock Health’s top-line findings were that: Patient-generated health data creates opportunity, and potential challenges Online health information is

 

Listening to Osler Listening to the Patient – Liberating Health Care at Medecision Liberation 2019

“Listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis,” Dr. William Osler is quoted to have said around the turn of the 20th century. Dr. Osler had been a strong advocate for the physician-patient conversation to inform the doctor’s diagnostic acumen and improve patient outcomes. This year is the centennial of Dr. Osler’s passing, so it’s especially timely that I introduce this post with his legendary assertion in the context of kicking off the 2019 Medecision Liberation conference. This meeting convenes the company’s clients, partners, and staff to share best practices, spark insights and learnings, and enable networking between

 

Health Consumers Expect Healthcare to be Digital (and Secure), Philips Future Health Index Finds

Health care system financing, delivery, and workflows widely vary across nations around the world. Philips surveyed health care professionals and consumers living in 15 countries, from North America to Asia, and found that these health systems share one over-arching objective: to provide quality care with improved experiences for both patients and healthcare professionals. Being Philips, what underpins that quality and experience is technology; Philips explored telehealth, AI, digital health records (DHRs), and other digital health tools that can engage patients. Philips published results from this global study in The Future Health Index 2019, themed “Transforming healthcare experiences, exploring the impact

 

Privacy and the New Health Ciitizen

Data security breaches, access challenges, and privacy leakages plague the current state of Americans’ personal health information (PHI). HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that was legislated in 1996, isn’t sufficiently robust to deal with the nature of this health information 23 years after that law was first implemented. That’s not a typo in the title: Ciitizen (spelled with two “i’s”) launched a The Patient Record Scorecard on 14th August. The Scorecard was developed to gauge the progress (and lack thereof) of patient information access afforded by peoples’ health care providers. What did Ciitizen learn from this process?

 

Health Care and Consumers in 2030: A Profile from KPMG

A “one layered delivery network through which patients can move seamlessly as they age and their needs evolve” will be the new health care platform to meet patients’ demands by 2030, according to a forecast from KPMG’s Healthcare and Life Sciences Institute. In Healthcare 2030: The consumer at the center, the KPMG team explores the demographic shifts and market drivers that will challenge the health care industry in the current U.S. delivery and financing system. The lens on that 2030 future is a consumer-centric delivery model that KPMG believes will be a solution to dealing with a demographic divide between

 

A Matter of Trust, Perception, Risk, and Uncertainty – The Big Issues Raised by the Acquisition of PatientsLikeMe and Other Patient Data Transactions

By Susannah Fox, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn and Lisa Suennen I’ve lived long enough to have learned The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned But that won’t happen to us Cause it’s always been a matter of trust           A Matter of Trust, by Billy Joel If you’re in health care and don’t live under a rock, you have probably heard that United Health Group (UHG) has acquired PatientsLikeMe (PLM).  After the announcement, there was a lot of sound and fury, some of which signified nothing, as the saying goes, and some which signified a lot.

 

Digital Transformation Is The New Mantra But Can’t Happen Without Access To Connectivity

As more of our “things” get digitally connected, there’s an unanswered question about how our connected lives impact human life and health. A new report from the OECD asks and answers: How’s Life in the Digital Age? Opportunities and Risks of the Digital Transformation for People’s Well-being. This research is part of OECD’s ongoing series asking the Big Question, “How’s Life?” A prevailing current mantra in work and daily living is “digital transformation.” The OECD broadly defined the phrase in their 2017 paper on the topic as follows: Mobility, cloud computing, the Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and big

 

Cost and Convenience Underpin Patient Demands As Health Consumers

Across generations, from younger to older patients, cost, transparency and convenience drive consumer satisfaction, Accenture’s latest health consumer survey found. I had the opportunity to brainstorm the study’s findings in real-time on the day of survey launch, 12 February, with Dr. Kaveh Safavi, Brian Kalis, and Jenn Francis at HIMSS19. Our starting point was the tipping-point statistic that over 50% of people in the U.S. have chosen to use a non-traditional health care setting. Those non-traditional sites of care include walk-in and retail clinics, outpatient surgery centers, virtual health (whether on the phone, on video or via mobile apps), on-demand services,

 

Open Table for Health: Patients Are Online For Health Search and Physician Reviews

Seeking health information online along with researching other patients’ perspectives on doctors are now as common as booking dinner reservations and reading restaurant reviews, based on Rock Health’s latest health consumer survey, Beyond Wellness for the Healthy: Digital Health Consumer Adoption 2018. Rock Health has gauged consumes’ digital health adoption fo a few years, showing year-on-year growth for “Googling” health information, seeking peer patients’ physician and hospital reviews, tracking activity, donning wearable tech, and engaging in live telehealth consultations with providers, as the first chart shows. The growth of tracking and wearable tech is moving toward more medical applications beyond fitness

 

HIMSS 2019: The Mainstreaming of Health IT, from Jim Cramer to Opioid Risk Scores

On January 10, 2019, Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money recommended that Apple buy Epic, a market leader in EHRs. At that moment in the Twitterverse, it occurred to me that health IT as a consumer-facing industry was beginning to mainstream in America. Cramer’s pronouncement led to a tweetstorm where hundreds of tweeters in and outside of health/care talked back and with Cramer. A few of my favorite comments were: “Jim Cramer needs a crash course in FHIR standards” from the wonkier section of peanut gallery. “They are not even in the same universe” among people dissing the idea in

 

The Single Market for Healthcare in Europe: Learnings for the U.S.

When I asked my longtime colleague and friend Robert Mittman, with whom I collaborated at Institute for the Future for a decade, how he managed international travel and jet lag, he said simply, “The time zone you’re in is the time zone you’re in.” This lesson has stayed with me since I received Robert’s advice over twenty years ago. Over the next two weeks, as I work alongside colleagues and clients in the EU and soon-to-Brexit UK, I am in time zones five and six hours later than my home-base of US Eastern Time. But the time zones I’m working

 

Open Source Health Care Will Liberate Patients

Information is power in the hands of people. When it’s open in the sunshine, it empowers people — whether doctors, patients, researchers, Presidents, teachers, students, Everyday People. Welcome to the era of Open Source Healthcare, not only the “about time” for patients to own their health, but for the launch of a new publication that will support and continue to evolve the concept. It’s really a movement that’s already in process.     Let’s go back to some definitions and healthcare basics to understand just why Open Source Healthcare is already a thing. When information access is uneven, it’s considered

 

How Digital Health Can Stimulate Economic Development

It’s National Health IT Week in the US, so I’m kicking off the week with this post focused on how digital health can bolster economic development. As the only health economist in the family of the 2018 HIMSS Social Media Ambassadors, this is a voice through which I can uniquely speak. In February 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), less formally known as the Stimulus Bill. This was the legislation best known for addressing and helping to bring the U.S. out of the Great Recession. A lesser-known component of ARRA was Title

 

Most U.S. Physicians, Burned Out, Favor A Flavor of Single Payer Health System

Most physicians feel some level of burnout, hassled by electronic health records and lost autonomy. No wonder, then, that a majority of doctors favor some type single payer health system — one-quarter fully single payer, a la Britain’s National Health Service; and another one-third a single payer combined with a private insurance option, discovered in the 2018 Survey of America’s Physicians report on practice patterns & perspectives, published by The Physicians Foundation. Eight in ten physicians are working at full-capacity or are over-extended, the survey found. Furthermore, 62% of doctors are pessimistic about the future of medicine. Physician burnout is a

 

Going Digital for Health Is a New-Normal for Consumers

Using digital health tech is a new normal for U.S. consumers, including Seniors, found in the 2018 digital health consumer survey from Deloitte. The title of the report, “Consumers are on board with virtual health options,” summarizes the bullish outlook for telehealth. That’s the consumer-demand side of the equation. But the tagline begs the supply side question: “Can the health care system deliver?” For a decade or longer, we’ve noted the slow uptake of telehealth and digital health tools among healthcare providers. But the consumer pressures, along with evidence-based self-service options for health – both for “care” and for wellness,

 

FANGs & MAGA – Meet WaWa for Health, Walgreens and Walmart

While Amazon and Google get lots of positive PR and media attention as major healthcare industry disruptors, don’t forget about two big “W’s,” Walgreens and Walmart, in the healthcare innovator mix. I recently read The Four in which Scott Galloway explains the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook in consumers’ everyday lives. These four tech-behemoths each have their particular designs on healthcare innovation, or disruption in the eyes of, say, Epic and Cerner working on health IT systems, or GE and IBM if you’ve been pioneers in health data or big-iron information technology. Then in the past week, the

 

Closing the Digital Health Gap Between Consumers and Physicians

  Consumers are more bullish demanding virtual and digital health tools from their physicians than doctors are in providing it, based on the research findings in What can health systems do to encourage physicians to embrace virtual care? from Deloitte. One-third of physicians have concerns about using virtual care services, such as medical errors that may result, access to technology, and data security.               One in two U.S. consumers are now tracking health via digital tools, and one-half of these share the data generated by their apps. That sharing is limited by doctors’ ability to

 

If Data Is The New Oil in Healthcare, Will It Be Safe to Drink? The Accenture Digital Health Tech Vision 2018

With the vast majority of patients’ medical records now digitized in electronic health records systems, the opportunities to mine, learn from, and act on the findings are promising for U.S. healthcare. More data is moving into internet clouds every day, from healthcare encounters with clinicians and inpatient hospital stays to prescribed medicines, retail receipts for over-the-counter remedies, wearable technologies, credit card swipes for products and services, and GPS check-ins. That’s a treasure trove of digital footprints that can tell a lot about us as patients, either in real-time or via prediction. But can we nudge stakeholders in health and healthcare

 

In This Eroding Era of Trust, Consumers Look to Doctors Above Banks and Retailers for Trusted Sharing

In this moment post-Cambridge Analytica/Facebook, the launch of the GDPR, and the everyday-ness of data breaches, consumers most trust doctors for sharing personal information. I’ve mined, through my health economic lens, the U.S. data published in the insightful report, Data Privacy: What the Consumer Really Thinks, a global research study from Axciom and the Data & Marketing Association (recently acquired by the Association of National Advertisers) working with Foresight Factory. The report compares consumers’ personal views on privacy and trust in ten countries: Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the UK, and the US. We learn that Americans

 

Doctors Say EHRs Are Good for Storage, But Risky for Patient Relationships and Burnout

Doctors have a complicated relationship with electronic health records (EHRs): two-thirds of primary care providers (PCPs) see value in digital records (EHRs), but at the same time believe the technology has weakened relationships with patients, detracted from clinical effectiveness, and lack streamlined user experience. That deficiency is, in three words, lack of interoperability; that challenge has required one-half of physician-users to use work-around’s to make their EHR investments more useful. These insights come out of a survey conducted among primary care providers by The Harris Poll for Stanford Medicine, published to coincide with the medical school’s convening of the EHR

 

Healthcare Information In-Security Is the New Normal

Three-fourths of healthcare providers experienced a data breach in 2017, according to the HIMSS 2018 Cybersecurity Survey. Health data insecurity is the new normal. A big piece of addressing the cybersecurity healthcare challenge is educating people who work in healthcare settings, and that has been under-funded. Only 41% of healthcare workers say they receive security training, a Forrester study learned in January 2018. Forrester also found that while healthcare organizations have experienced some of the most egregious cyberattacks, the industry allocates a smaller proportion of IT budgets to security compared with than other organizational types at a rate of 22%

 

Re-Imagining Healthcare – a Lesson from Von Clausewitz in the Fog of War

When you’re on the battlefield and you can’t see what lies ahead, go high, recommended General Von Clausewitz in his book, On War. I paraphrase this prescription from the good General-strategist’s book, On War — “War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.” Governor Mark Leavitt, who held the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bush, offered this advice at the recent Liberation

 

Nudging Patients to Use EHRs: Moving Toward a Tipping Point for Consumer Health IT

Half of U.S. patients were offered online access to their health records by providers or insurers, and one-half of them accessed the EHR at least once in the last year.  One in four of those offered online EHR access looked at them more than 3 times. It takes a good nudge from a provider to motivate a patient to access online medical records, found by ONC in their latest research into consumers’ use of EHRs detailed in Individuals’ use of online medical records and technology for health needs, the ONC Data Brief No. 40, published April 2018. he concept of

 

Consumer Trust, Privacy and Healthcare – Considering #HIMSS18 in the Stark Light of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

What a difference a couple of weeks make…. On 1st March 2018, two over-arching issues remained with me leaving Las Vegas and #HIMSS18: the central, recognized role of cybersecurity threats in healthcare, and the growing use of consumer-facing technologies for self- and virtual care. Eighteen days later, we all learned about Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of 50 million Americans’ social network data posted on Facebook. We who work in healthcare must pose the questions: going forward, how trusting will patients, consumers and caregivers be sharing their personal health information (PHI)? Will people connect dots between their Facebook lives – and their

 

Add Behavioral Data to Social Determinants For Better Patient Understanding

“Health agencies will have to become at least as sophisticated as other consumer/retail industries in analyzing a variety of data that helps uncover root causes of human behavior,” Gartner recommended in 2017. That’s because “health” is not all pre-determined by our parent-given genetics. Health is determined by many factors in our own hands, and in forces around us: physical environment, built environment, and public policy. These are the social determinants of health, but knowing them even for the N of 1 patient isn’t quite enough to help the healthcare industry move the needle on outcomes and costs. We need to

 

#Engage4Health: How Patients Are Morphing Into Healthcare Consumers, for #HIMSS18

This blog appears today as part of a #HIMSS18 primer series for attendees, and the industry at large, to discuss major health IT issues that will help move health and healthcare delivery forward in 2018 – and beyond. I’m grateful to HIMSS to be one of 20 Social Media Ambassadors appointed for this year’s conference, which convenes in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo Center from March 5 to 9th, 2018.  Prioritizing the patient-as-consumer through my health economic lens, the biggest priorities will be: Engaging patients in self-care and driving health and health plan literacy to better manage constrained access

 

The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer – What It Means for Health/Care in America

Trust in the United States has declined to its lowest level since the Edelman Trust Barometer has conducted its annual survey among U.S. adults. Welcome to America in Crisis, as Edelman brands Brand USA in 2018. In the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer, across the 28 nations polled, trust among the “informed public” in the U.S. “plunged,” as Edelman describes it, by 23 points to 45. The Trust Index in America is now #28 of 28 countries surveyed (that is, rock bottom), dropping below Russia and South Africa. “The public’s confidence in the traditional structures of American leadership is now fully

 

Hug Your Physician: S/He Needs It – Listening to the 2018 Medscape National Physician Burnout & Depression Report

Two in five U.S. physicians feels burned out, according to the Medscape National Physician Burnout & Depression Report for 2018. This year, Medscape explicitly adds the condition of “depression” to its important study, and its title. In 2017, the Medscape report was about bias and burnout. Physicians involved in primary care specialties and critical care are especially at-risk for burnout, the study found. One in five OBGYNs experience both burnout and depression. Furthermore, there’s a big gender disparity when it comes to feeling burned out: nearly one-half of female physicians feel burnout compared with 38% of male doctors. Being employed by

 

CVS + Aetna: An Inflection Point for American Healthcare

The nation’s largest retail pharmacy chain signed a deal to combine with one of the top three health insurance companies. The deal is valued at $69 billion. I wrote about this inflection point for U.S. healthcare four weeks ago here in Health Populi. CVS is both the biggest pharmacy and pharmacy benefit manager in the U.S., as the first chart shows. In my previous post, I talked about the value of vertical integration bringing together the building blocks of retail pharmacy and pharmacist care, retail clinics, the PBM (Caremark), along with Aetna’s health plan member base and business. As Amazon and other

 

High-Deductibles Do Not Automatically Inspire Healthcare Consumerism

It takes more than enrolling in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) for someone to immediately morph into an effective health care “consumer.” Research from Dr. Jeffrey Kullgren and his team from the University of Michigan found that enrollees in HDHPs could garner more benefits from these plans were people better informed about how to use them, including how to save for them and spend money once enrolled in them. The team’s research letter was published in JAMA Internal Medicine on 27 November 2017. The discussion details results of a survey conducted among 1,637 people 18 to 64 years of age

 

A Health Consumer Perspective on CVS+Aetna

  A response to Amazon’s potential moves in healthcare and pharmacy…strategic positioning for the post-Trump healthcare landscape…vertical integration to better manage healthcare utilization and costs…these, and other rationale have been offered by industry analysts and observers of the discussions between CVS and Aetna, for the former to acquire the latter. “A pharmacy chain buying a health insurance company?” many have asked me over the past few days. These inquiring minds include people who work both inside and outside of health/care. I ask back: in 2017 and in the future, “What is a pharmacy? What is a health plan?” See the

 

President Trump Utters “M” for Murder, and a $1 MM Price Tag for Rx Therapy – an October 2017 Pharma Update

Last week, President Trump once again used the “M” word (“murder”) in a sentence accusing the pharmaceutical industry of too-high priced products for U.S. health citizens. The sentence included the phrase, “Drug companies are getting away with murder.” That week, USA Today published an article on a new FDA-approved specialty drug therapy that could add up to over a $1 mm price tag. There is much to report in the world of pharmaceutical innovation, pricing, and patient Rx coverage this month. The CVS Health – Epic announcement ranks high in Health Populi’s vision for the evolving health/care ecosystem, bringing together two

 

What Patients Feel About Technology, Healthcare Costs and Social Determinants

U.S. consumers feel positive about the roles of technology and social determinants in improving healthcare, but are concerned about costs, according to the 2017 Patient Survey Report conducted for The Physicians Foundation. The survey gauged patients’ perspectives across four issues: the physician-patient relationship, the cost of healthcare, social determinants of health, and lifestyle choices. Two key threads in the research explain how Americans feel about healthcare in the U.S. at this moment: the role of technology and the cost of health care. First, the vast majority of consumers view technology, broadly defined, as important for their health care. 85% of people

 

The Rx is UX: A Prescription for EHRs and Patient Engagement

It’s National Health IT Week (#NHIT Week), and I’m revisiting research published earlier this year to connect the dots between EHR implementation (good news: it’s nearly universal in doctors’ offices and hospitals) and patients embracing their health information (not-so-much). What’s missing: UX design and respect for peoples’ life-flows.  Most physician practices and hospitals in the U.S. have installed electronic health records (EHRs). But in a classic Field of Dreams scenario, we have made patients’ medical records digital, but people aren’t asking for them or accessing them en masse. “How do we make it easier for patients to request and manage their

 

Leveraging the Essential Data of Life: Health 2.0 – Day 1 Learnings

The future of effective and efficient healthcare will be underpinned by artful combinations of both digital technologies and “analog humans,” if the first day of the Health 2.0 Conference is a good predictor. Big thoughts about a decentralized future in healthcare kicked off Day 1 of the 11th annual Health 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, CA. The co-founders of Health 2.0 (H20), Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya, explained the five drivers of the tech-enabled health future. 1. The new interoperability, underpinned by FHIR standards and blockchain. “FHIR” stands for fast healthcare interoperability resources, which are informatics standards that enable data

 

Strengthening Chronic Care Is Both Personal and Financial for the Patient

  6 in 10 people diagnosed with a chronic condition do not feel they’re doing everything they can to manage their condition. At the same time, 67% of healthcare providers believe patients aren’t certain about their target health metrics. Three-quarters of physicians are only somewhat confident their patients are truly informed about their present state of health. Most people and their doctors are on the same page recognizing that patients lack confidence in managing their condition, but how to remedy this recognized challenge? The survey and report, Strengthening Chronic Care, offers some practical advice. This research was conducted by West

 

Patients and “Their” Medical Records: Crossing the Chasm

Most physician practices and hospitals in the U.S. have installed electronic health records (EHRs). But in a classic Field of Dreams scenario, we have made patients’ medical records digital, but people aren’t asking for them or accessing them en masse. “How do we make it easier for patients to request and manage their own data?” asks a report from the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC), Improving the Health Records Request Process for Patients – Highlights from User Experience Research. The ONC has been responsible for implementing the HITECH Act’s provisions, ensuring that health care providers have met Meaningful

 

Digital Healthcare At the Inflection Point, Via Mary Meeker

Healthcare is at a digital inflection point, asserts   Internet Trends 2017 – Code Conference, by the iconic Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins. Published May 31, 2017, few tech-focused reports have the gravitas or generate the readership that this report does. I’m one of Meeker’s perennial readers, covering this report through my health/care lens here on Health Populi for several years (links to previous posts below). Of the report’s 355 pages, 22 are devoted to healthcare (pages 288-319), a section curated by Noah Kaufman of KP. This section of the report assembles data from a range of publicly available sources,

 

Building Digital Trust Is Now Part of Serving Up Healthcare

The most trusted stewards for protecting consumers’ health data are “my providers:” “my” physician (88%), “my” pharmacy (85%), and “my” hospital” (84%). according to the Accenture 2017 Consumer Survey on Healthcare Cybersecurity and Digital Trust. Who’s least-trusted? Government (56%) and tech companies (57%). Note, though, that most Americans (over 50%) trust these health data holders — it’s just that fewer people trust them than healthcare providers, who are top health information protectors in health consumers’ trust rosters. Accenture commissioned Nielsen to conduct this survey in November 2016 in seven countries. The results discussed here in Health Populi focus on the

 

Most Medicare Patients Haven’t Accessed Their EHR Information (Yet)

The HITECH Act, part of the Stimulus Bill (officially, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA) invested $35 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds to incentivize health care providers (doctors and hospitals) to acquire and use electronic health record systems (EHRs). Most providers have taken advantage of these financial incentives, so that EHRs are now part of mainstream medical practice and workflow among providers. For patients, and particularly those enrolled in the government programs of Medicare and Medicaid, personal access to their personal data in EHRs has been largely elusive. While nearly 9 in 10 doctors and hospitals have offered these

 

Patients Grow Comfortable With Digital Health Tools, CDW Finds

It’s generally thought that healthy people are more health-engaged than people diagnosed with medical issues. But that’s old health school thinking: most health consumers managing chronic conditions say they’ve become more engaged with healthcare over the past two years, according to CDW’s 2017 Patient Engagement Perspectives Study. In 2017, 70% of patients told CDW they’d become more engaged with healthcare, up from 57% in 2016. That’s a 20% growth in the proportion of patients engaging in healthare in just one year. Growing signs of patient engagement are in people driven to access online patient portals for their personal healthcare records: People

 

Cybersecurity and Healthcare Consumers: My Conversation with Dr. Kaveh Safavi, Accenture

Patients are morphing into consumers, but with eyes wide open: they know about data breaches, and they increasingly demand healthcare services delivered on their own terms. I met with Accenture’s Dr. Kaveh Safavi, Frances Dare, and Jenn Francis at HIMSS17 to discuss their latest research into these two topics. In this post, I’ll cover the growing challenge of cybersecurity and what Accenture learned about consumer data breaches. Tomorrow I’ll discuss Accenture’s latest findings on the expectations of the evolving health/care consumer. [Spoiler alert: personal health information data security is one of those expectations]. At HIMSS17, the issue of cybersecurity is

 

From EHRecords to EHDelivery: Talking With Dr. Roy Schoenberg of American Well

Telehealth has come of age at HIMSS in 2017. No longer is the concept relegated to footnote or edge-booth status on the conference floor. Instead, telehealth, broadly defined, is now a mainstream concept embraced by healthcare providers, payors and, increasingly, consumers. I spent time brainstorming telehealth with one of the pioneers of modern telehealth in the U.S., Dr. Roy Schoenberg, who co-founded American Well with his brother Ido Schoenberg, in 2007. As such, the company is among the most mature telehealth entities operating in America, delivering live video health visits to millions of health consumers through the American Well telehealth

 

Healthcare and the Autonomous Car: Setting the Stage for HIMSS17

The autonomous car is a metaphor for healthcare: that’s how my first interview kicking off the  HIMSS marathon began. The annual 2017 HIMSS conference isn’t your father’s or mother’s HIMSS of ten years ago, or even the HIMSS of 2010 — the year that financial incentives for EHR adoption began to stream from the HITECH Act of 2009, motivating thousands of healthcare providers to acquire and meaningfully use digital health records systems. Then, the HIMSS conference floor was abuzz with EHR frenzy. This week, over 43,000 people working at the intersection of healthcare and technology have converged in Orlando, Florida, for

 

Digital Technology Is A Bridge To Healthcare Consumers: A HIMSS Preface

  “Digital technology can provide a bridge to the healthcare system via sensors, tools, and trackers for people who are living their lives each day,” I explained to the social media team at Philips, which is morphing as an organization to being all digital health, all-the-time. (Here’s what I learned about Philips and digital health in January 2017 after meeting with Jeroen Tas at the CES in Vegas). Here’s the larger discussion, shared with several of my fellow members of the HIMSS Social Media Ambassador family. I’ll be meeting with Philips’ leadership at HIMSS, the annual health IT conference that

 

How Amazon Has Primed Healthcare Consumers

We are all Amazon Prime primed as consumers now. So it should not surprise healthcare providers, plans and suppliers that consumers expect just-in-time convenience for their healthcare, Accenture has found. Mind the gap: 8 in 10 U.S. patients would welcome some aspect of virtual healthcare, but only 1 in 5 providers is meeting that need. The consumer demand for virtual care is palpable for: Tracking biometrics, among 77% of consumers (say, for measuring blood pressure or blood glucose for people managing diabetes) Following up appointments, for 76% of people after seeing a doctor or being discharged from hospital Receiving reminders

 

My $100 Flu Shot: How Much Paper Waste Costs U.S. Healthcare

An abbreviated version of this post appeared in the Huffington Post on 9 February 2017. This version includes the Health Populi Hot Points after the original essay, discussing the consumer’s context of retail experience in healthcare and implications for the industry under Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price — a proponent of consumer-directed healthcare and, especially, health savings accounts. We’ll be brainstorming the implications of the 2016 CAQH Index during a Tweetchat on Thursday, February 16, at 2 pm ET, using the hashtag #CAQHchat. America ranks dead-last in healthcare efficiency compared with our peer countries, the Commonwealth Fund

 

Doctors See Benefits in Patient Engagement Via Health IT

A special report on patient engagement and digital technology was published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Based on a survey of doctors and healthcare executives, the research found that clinicians and managers welcome the opportunity to use digital tech — when it makes financial sense. That conclusion inspired the title of the article, Patient Engagement Survey: Technology Tools Gain Support – But Cost Is a Hurdle. NEJM polled 595 members of the NEJM Catalyst Insights Council, which included healthcare executives and clinicians who deliver healthcare. Here is NEJM’s scenario on patient-engaging health IT, a Holy Grail of sorts:

 

Health/Care Data Ecosystems E-merge at CES 2017

Digital health innovations were fast-proliferating at CES 2017. The bad news is there are so many of them, it’s dizzying and fragmented. The good news is that there are emerging health data ecosystems that will streamline consumers’ user experience so that people can derive knowledge, actionable advice and value out of using these tools. Walking miles of aisles in the Sands Convention Center in the first week of January 2017 can be a dizzying prospect, with hype and best-faces-forward in every single exhibitor at the show. In the health segment at CES, there’s a long list of digital tools to

 

Health Is Personal at the Connected Health Summit

“Because health is personal” is the tagline at the 2016 Connected Health Conference being held at the Gaylord Resort in National Harbor in metro Washington, DC. “Personal,” “Connected,” and “Health” are the three words that comprise the adjectives in the Personal Connected Health Alliance, the host of this conference. PCHA was formed through the merger of HIMSS, the health IT association, and Continua, the organization advocating for health technology “interoperability” — the ability for digital and communications technologies to communicate with each other, to remove friction from health data exchange. This week, PCHA announced that it will bring the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance into

 

Evidence That Mainstream Consumers Growing Digital Health Muscles

About 1 in 2 patients in the US are accessing their electronic health records in early 2016, according to Accenture’s 2016 Consumer Survey on Patient Engagement, Patients Want a Heavy Dose of Digital. This post is based on a presentation I attended by Accenture’s Dr. Kipp Webb yesterday. Accenture conducted survey research with consumers in seven countries for this study. The data and insights shared in this post are based only on the survey results from 2,225 US patients. The proportion of US health consumers accessing their health records grew from 27% in 2014 to 45% in 2016 — an increase of

 

Most Doctors With EHRs Still Not Taking Advantage of Their Benefits

Interoperability of medical records across physician offices remained elusive in 2015, according to the latest data reported out by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). About 8 in 10 U.S. physicians had an electronic health records system in 2015. One-third of these doctors electronically sent, received, integrated or searched for patient health information — indicating that most physicians still aren’t using EHRs to their fullest extent. These findings come from the NCHS Data Brief from the CDC, State Variation in Electronic Sharing of Information in Physician Offices: United States, 2015. The bar chart illustrates the percentage of U.S. office-based doctors

 

Doctors Are Growing to Like Digital Health Tools, Says the AMA

Notwithstanding the head of the AMA recently referring to digital health technologies as “snake oil,” it appears that one-half of physicians is keen on digital health. And scale, not age, matters when it comes to doctors using digital health tools. The American Medical Association (AMA) surveyed physicians on their use of digital health tools, finding that primary care physicians (PCPs) and doctors working in larger and more complex practices tend to be more digital. In Physicians’ motivations and requirements for adopting digital clinical tools, the AMA’s digital health study, “Physicians are optimistic about digital health innovation and its game-changing potential

 

Most Digital Health Consumers Say They Benefit from Connected Health

Managing stress, weight, mental health, sleep, and heart function are among the top-most desired reasons already-connected health consumers are interested in further connecting their health, according to The 2016 HealthMine Digital Health Report. The most popular tools people use to digitally manage their health deal with fitness and exercise (among 50% of connected health consumers), food and nutrition (for 46%), and weight loss (for 39%). 3 in 4 people who use digital health tools say they have improved their health by connecting to these tools. 57% of digital health users also say going health-digital has lowered their healthcare costs. The survey

 

Most Hospitals Offer Patients Electronic Access to Medical Records

The number of hospitals offering patients electronic access to their health information grew seven times between 2013 and 2015. Electronic health records access has gone mainstream in America, according to the latest findings by The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC-HIT). The data are detailed in Electronic Capabilities for Patient Engagement among U.S. Non-Federal Acute Care Hospitals: 2012-2015, an ONC Data Brief. Two in three U.S. patients can now view, download, and transmit their personal health information, shown in the bar chart. This hockey-stick growth, from 10% in 2013 to 69% in 2015, results from the

 

Consumers Seek Quality and Privacy In Tech-Enabled Healthcare

Consumers are open to technology-enabled healthcare, but look to providers to ensure quality and privacy of patients’ personal health information, according to Will Patients and Caregivers Embrace Tech-Enabled Healthcare?, based on the Deloitte 2016 Survey of US Health Care Consumers. Seven in 10 consumers would use at least one of the technologies Deloitte served up in its study, with telemedicine at the top of the list: 49% of people favor telemedicine for post-surgical care, 48% for chronic disease management, 36% for care while traveling, and 32% for minor health issues. While Millennials are generally keener across-the-board for tech-enabled health care,

 

Most Americans Say Health IT’s Important – But Not Well-Used

Most Americans say accessing their lab tests, health history, prescription drug lists, and doctors’ notes is important. But patients in the U.S. do not universally have access to their electronic health information, and nor do all those who can access their personal health information do so, according to the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: August 2016 from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). In yesterday’s Health Populi blog, I focused on the Poll’s political findings — that Hillary Clinton is perceived by more American voters than Donald Trump to be trusted on health care issues. In today’s post, I’ll cover the poll’s findings on

 

More Americans See Hillary Clinton As the 2016 Presidential Health Care Candidate

When it comes to health care, more American voters trust Hillary Clinton to deal with health issues than Donald Trump, according to the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: August 2016 from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). The poll covered the Presidential election, the Zika virus, and consumers’ views on the value of and access to personal health information via electronic health records. Today’s Health Populi post will cover the political dimensions of the August 2016 KFF poll; in tomorrow’s post, I will address the health information issues. First, let’s address the political lens of the poll. More voters trust Hillary Clinton to do

 

The Drug Epidemic-Testing and Data Arm the Battle

More than 40 Americans die every day from prescribed opiate overdoses, Dr. Tom Frieden of the CDC has recognized. The harms of pain-killing drugs have been substantial: Dr. Frieden observed, “the prevalence of opioid dependence may be as high as 26% among patients in primary care receiving opioids for chronic non-cancer-related pain.” There were more deaths due to drug overdoses in 2014 than in any previous year, 61% of which involved opioid pain relieving medications such as oxycodone and hydrocodine, and heroin which has grown in use over the past few years. The CDC has recommended that healthcare providers do

 

More Hospitals Extend Online Patient Access to EHRs

A majority of U.S. hospitals could enable patients digital access to their personal medical records in 2015. Specifically, nearly all US hospitals offer patients the opportunity to view their medical records online in 2015. Eight in 10 hospitals were able to download patient information from their medical record as well as enable patients to request a change to that record, according to a Trendwatch report from the American Hospital Association (AHA), Individuals’ Ability to Electronically Access Their Hospital Medical Records, Perform Key Tasks is Growing. Over the past several years, hospitals have made significant capital investments in buying, adopting, and

 

Retail Clinics Continue to Shape Local Healthcare Markets

Retail clinics are a growing source of primary care for more U.S. health consumers, discussed in a review of retail clinics published by Drug Store News in July 2016. There will be more than 2,800 retail clinics by 2018, according to Accenture’s tea leaves. Two key drivers will bolster retail clinics’ relevance and quality in local health delivery systems: Retail clinics’ ability to forge relationships with legacy health care providers (physicians, hospitals); and, Clinics’ adoption and effective use of information technology that enables data sharing (e.g., to the healthcare provider’s electronic health records system) and data liquidity (that is, securely moving

 

Most Wired Hospitals Spending on Cybersecurity, Telehealth and Population Health

Investing information technology dollars in telehealth and mobile platforms, patient engagement, and cybersecurity are major focuses for leading IT-savvy hospitals in America, according to the 2016 Most Wired survey of healthcare organizations, released in July 2016 sponsored by Hospitals and Health Networks and Health Forum, a division of the American Hospitals Association. This survey, in its 18th year, has become an important benchmark measuring the adoption of information technology tools and services among American hospitals and health systems. The complete list of Most Wired hospitals for 2016 can be found here. The most popular telehealth services offered by the Most Wired hospitals are

 

Salesforce on the State of the Connected Patient: Willing But Not There Yet

About two-thirds of health consumers would be open to virtual health care options for non-urgent situations, according to the 2016 Connected Patient Report from Salesforce Research. Salesforce conducted the survey with the Harris Poll online among 2,025 U.S. adults in June 2016. 1,736 of these health consumers had health insurance and a primary care physician. Among the many findings in the report, Salesforce found that: In terms of communications and relationship… The vast majority of consumers with primary care physicians are very satisfied with them (91% of people with PCPs) However, one-third of people with a PCP believe their physicians would

 

The Promise of the Platform Economy for Health

There’s a lot of talk about the growing platform economy. If well-designed platforms get adopted in healthcare, they may help our ailing healthcare systems get better. The quality, safety, and convenience of healthcare in America suffer from a lack of patients’ personal health data being essentially locked in data siloes. The diagnosis is lack of data “liquidity:” the ability for our health information generated in various touch points in the healthcare system and in our personal lives each day to move outside of the locations where the bits and bytes were first created: to our clinicians, researchers, health providers, and to

 

Are We Health Engaged Yet? Frost & Sullivan Responds “Meh”

The top health-related activities among U.S. adults include routinely taking vitamins and supplements, and prescription medicines, according to Frost & Sullivan’s report, Are We Engaged Yet? Their response to the titular question lies in in the subtitle: “US consumers appear confused or ambivalent about what it means to be proactive or engaged in their health.” 1 in 2 U.S. adults says they’re “somewhat engaged” in their healthcare, according to Reenita Das’s write-up on the study in Forbes magazine. She notes that: Consumers with higher incomes have more confidence in their access to health care services and quality of care Budget-constrained consumer

 

What Health Care Can Learn from the Blood Clot Community

  “Our goal is to create an aware and engaged, irritating set of patients who create a dialogue with health care providers once they’ve had a [blood] clot,” explained Randy Fenninger, CEO of the National Blood Clot Alliance (NBCA). NBCA’s tagline and hashtag is “Stop the Clot.” Welcome to the multi-stakeholder community involved with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and, clinically speaking, Venous Thromboembolism (VTE). We’re talking blood clots, and the public health burden of this condition is big: it’s a leading cause of death and disability. One in 4 people in the world die of conditions caused by thrombosis. I had

 

Costs and Connection At the Core of Consumers’ Health-Value Equations

Cost ranks first among the factors of selecting health insurance for most Americans across the generations. As a result, most consumers are likely to shop around for both health providers and health plans, learned through a 2016 Xerox survey detailed in New Insights on Value-Based Care, Healthcare Attitudes 2016. The younger the consumer, the more important costs are, Xerox’s poll found, shown in the first chart. Thus, “shopping around” is more pronounced among younger health consumers — although a majority people who belong to Boomer and Greatest Generation cohorts do shop around for both health providers and health insurance plans —

 

Withings Inside: Nokia’s Digital Health Vision

The first health news I read this morning in my Google Alerts was a press release explaining that Nokia planned to acquire Withings for EU170 (about $190mm). As an early adopter and devoted user of the Withings Smart Body Analyzer, I took this news quite personally. “What will Nokia be doing with my beloved Withings?” I asked myself via Twitter early this morning. As if on cue, a public relations pro with whom I’ve been collegial for many years contacted me to see if I’d like to talk with the Founder and CEO of Withings, Cédric Hutchings, and Ramzi Haidamus,

 

The Hospital of the Future Won’t Be a Hospital At All

In the future, a hospital won’t be a hospital at all, according to 9 in 10 hospital executives who occupy the c-suite polled in Premier’s Spring 2016 Economic Outlook. Among factors impacting their ability to deliver health care, population health and the ACA were the top concerns among one-half of hospital executives. 1 in 4 hospital CxOs think that staffing shortages have the biggest impact on care delivery, and 13% see emerging tech heavily impacting care delivery. Technology is the top area of capital investment planned over the next 12 months, noted by 84% of hospital execs in the survey.

 

Paper and Fax, Not EHRs or Portals, Are Popular for Health Data Sharing

Faxing in health care ranks higher in patient data information sharing than using secure email, online portals, health information exchange (HIE), or leveraging electronic health records. Welcome to the American healthcare system in 2016, as described in a market spotlight published by IDC, The Rocky Road to Information Sharing in the Health System. IDC’s survey research among healthcare providers forecasts the “rocky road” to information sharing. That rocky road is built for medical errors, duplication of services, greater healthcare costs, and continued health il-literacy for many patients. “The holy grail of interoperability — lower-cost, better-quality care with an improved experience for

 

Honoring the Doctor-Patient Relationship

  March 30 this week was National Doctors Day, which was proclaimed a national celebration by President George Bush in 1991. But as I’ve written through this week here on Health Populi, doctors may enjoy prestige on the outside, but they’re hurting on the inside — both economically in medical/business practices, and emotionally in their personal career-lives. Patients tend to like, even love, their personal physicians based on years of consumer polls on the topic (usually themed, “love my own doctor, hate the health care system”). But physicians and their patients aren’t on the same page, literally, when it comes

 

The Growth of Digital Patient Engagement

9 in 10 people in the U.S. use some form of digital technology or electronic tools for health management, Accenture found in the company’s 2016 Consumer Survey on Patient Engagement. Younger people (18-34) tend to favor wearable technology, apps and social media for health. More older people (age 65-74) mine electronic health records (EHRs) for personal health data and more likely use tech for remote consultations with care providers. Overall, the percent of U.S. consumers accessing their EHR data grew by over 50% between 2014 and 2016, from 27% to 45% of people doing so, with older people indexing higher

 

Yin and Yang: Doctors and Patients’ Bipolar Views on EHR Access

Patients are from Mars and Doctors from Venus when it comes to their views on whether consumers should have full access to their electronic health records (EHRs), according to a survey from Accenture released this week at the 2016 meeting of the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas. The vast majority of consumers are keen to access their full EHR, compared to a majority of doctors who advocate for limited access, as the circle diagram dramatically illustrates. The “old days” of patient information asymmetry — with a paper-based folder that got locked up in a health records cabinet — are gone.

 

The Health Information Economy – Better With Patients

“Consumers expect to have their data available and shareable.” Two essays in two issues in the past two weeks of The New England Journal of Medicine point to the importance of patients – people, caregivers, consumers, all — in the morphing “health information economy,” a phrase used in the title of one of the published pieces. In Time for a Patient-Driven Health Information Economy, Dr. Ken Mandl and Dr. Isaac Kohane, who are both affiliated with the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard, discuss peoples’ growing interest in engaging with their personal health information, noting frustrating barriers to doing so:

 

Diagnosis: Acute Health Care Angst In America

There’s an overall feeling of angst about healthcare in America among both health care consumers and the people who provide care — physicians and administrators. On one thing most healthcare consumers and providers (can agree: that the U.S. health care system is on the wrong track.  Another area of commonality between consumers and providers regards privacy and security of health information: while healthcare providers will continue to increase investments in digital health tools and electronic health records systems, both providers and consumers are concerned about the security of personal health information. In How We View Healthcare in America: Consumer and Provider Perspectives,

 

In 2016 Reaching For The Triple Aim Will Drive Health IT Spending

Adoption of telehealth, remote health monitoring, patient engagement platforms, mobile and digital health applications, and the emergence of the Internet of Things in health care will all be bolstered in 2016 based on health care providers’ having to do more with less (money, labor, resources). The value-based healthcare world — the migration of payment “from volume to value” — requires greater investment in information and communications technology that moves care to lower-cost sites, with lower-priced labor (as appropriate), and shifting greater clinical self-care and financial skin-in-the-game to patients. My annual health IT forecast was published yesterday in iHealthBeat, 2016: Technology

 

Getting to Connected Health Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint

Consumers may demand connected experiences in daily living, but there have been many barriers to health care industry stakeholders delivering on that expectation: among them, privacy and security concerns, and provider resistance. This demand-and-supply chasm is noted in Deloitte’s Center for Health Solutions’ latest look into the healthcare landscape, Accelerating the adoption of connected health. The objectives of connected health, or cHealth, are: To improve digital connectivity among consumers, providers, health plans and life sciences companies To facilitate self-managed care in a secure environment that protects privacy To deliver care outside of traditional institutional settings To enable chronic care management

 

The Telephone Is As Digital As It Gets in Mainstream U.S. Health Care

The phone continues to be the platform technology used in this digital age of health care, according to Better Together: High Tech and High Touch, a survey report sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Council of Accountable Physician Practices. Nielsen’s Strategy Health Perspectives project polled 5,014 U.S. adults in June and July 2015 for this study. According to the study sponsors, this is the largest consumer population studied conducted to-date on the topic of digital health use and demand. The first chart illustrates the reality of digital health in the U.S. 2015: that notwithstanding the availability of telehealth,

 

More consumers expect a connected health experience

When most patients in the U.S. visit their doctors, they find their medical history missing or incomplete. 1 in 2 American patients say their doctors do not have a complete list of their medications. But the new health consumer expects a connected health experience the likes of which, as consumers, they expect and generally find in their everyday lives. One-half of consumers would prefer to get lab test results, access their medical records, and fill out paperwork from a doctor’s office ahead of a visit online versus via phone or in person. Surescripts conducted a survey with Kelton Global in

 

It’s a retail health world: consumers at the helm of health/care

Retail health v1.0 encompassed the pharmacy, then embraced urgent care and retail health clinics co-located in brick-and-mortar pharmacy chain stores. In v2.0, retail health encompasses all health/care, really, because people, patients and consumers are essentially self-insured up to the point when their health plan kicks in some cash. The high-deductible health plan era is ushering in the retail health era, broadly writ. Hospitals & Health Networks magazine (HHN) ran a story titled Think Like a Retailer to Engage Patients, covering founder of WEGO Health Jack Barrette‘s and my panel presentation at the 2015 HIMSS conference in Chicago last week. Writer