Expect the Unexpected: Healthcare Technology Horizon

First published in New York Medical Group Management Association New York Beat e-newsletter August 2020

In a recent webinar, a colleague showed a slide with a multiple choice question: Who led the digital transformation of your company?
A. CEO
B. CTO
C. COVID-19
Of course, choice C was circled in red. From schools to retail, the coronavirus pandemic has forced us to change how we perform everyday tasks we hardly paid a thought to last autumn. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but COVID is triple espresso she is drinking to fuel her innovation. 

Medical practices have been, for quite some time, flirting with the idea of telehealth and more recently with remote patient monitoring. Largely left to large or hospital-owned practices, the idea of treating patients virtually has been seen as more of a Jetsons age novelty than an indispensable resource. But the pandemic has forced many to think differently and act in ways that best serve patients and support the sustainability of the practice. Healthcare has been pushed to elevate the use of technology in order to stay safe, effective, relevant, and viable.

Chances are your practice is now doing some form of telehealth and you were not doing much prior to COVID. It’s likely the implementation of this technology was a disruption for which you weren’t fully prepared. This begs a few questions: What else is on the horizon in healthcare innovation that we may not be expecting? Are there better ways to do what we quickly implemented? Do we need to modify our workflows? Can we better impact outcomes, satisfaction, revenues, or profits by enhancing what we’ve done? 

Let’s examine a few of the upcoming transformations you can prepare for to ensure the next major disruption is more of a tremor than a quake to your everyday operations:

• Telehealth Expansion

The vast majority of healthcare practitioners who have only recently moved into the telehealth space have no intention of reverting. As insurance reimbursement scales to meet the demand, the benefits of using remote communication to treat patients will continue to grow. Wider adoption, increased usage among vulnerable populations, and higher acuity use cases will continue to be evident. Telehealth will be increasingly used to care for patients who are traveling or snowbirds as well as provide more consistent tracking of patients with chronic or complex conditions. The impact of avoiding unnecessary hospital and ED visits will further increase its cost-effectiveness. Patients have come to trust telehealth as a viable alternative and will come to expect the option when making healthcare decisions. Being prepared for this will position your practice as one that is patient centered, and as an employer who can provide flexibility for clinicians who are unable or unwilling to attend in-person visits. Look at the telehealth program you may have implemented as a result of COVID. Are  there ways to strengthen the system to shift into a more permanent and integrated one? 

• Advances in Wearables and Remote Patient Monitoring

Once only sported by early adopters and elite athletes, the age of Apple Watches and Fitbits is now is full swing. The technology is improving, easier to clinically incorporate and capture into EHRs in a meaningful and actionable way. Advantages of getting accurate readings for, say, blood pressure or blood glucose between clinical encounters provides more frequent touchpoints, faster feedback about interventions, and earlier warning for trends and impending events. This new stream of data can help increase revenues, enhance patient outcomes, reduce operations costs, and enhance patient experiences. Technology improvements in cardiac monitoring and other metrics are advancing rapidly and this evolution means you will not be bombarded with a flood of data but only values that will help in making decisions. If you’re not currently thinking about how to incorporate wearable data into your daily workflow, you should be. 

• Enhancing the Patient Experience with Digital Health Apps

In addition to adopting telehealth and remote monitoring to engage patients between encounters, innovative practices are also adopting a myriad of other tools and capabilities to enhance the patient experience.  Enabling patients to find a doctor, schedule an appointment, message their provider, pay their bill, get directions, rate their experience, report how they feel, confirm compliance, get educational content, and access their clinical record from their smartphone can significantly enhance their perception of providers.  While many of these functions can be addressed individually, providers will find more patient satisfaction and retention if they deploy comprehensive, integrated  apps that provide a single point of access for all of these functions.  

• Virtual Reality

Senior living facilities have been using VR in the treatment of memory care. Experiences from the past can feel fully immersive and trigger memories, conversations and new mental connections. VR is increasingly being used by surgeons to visualize complex surgery and improve interventions by superimposing virtual images over the actual patient. We are only beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible in this arena. Stay tuned for the near future of VR applications that will be useful in your everyday workflow.

Advances in technology are but one piece of the puzzle you need to stay ahead of an ever-evolving healthcare landscape. To survive and thrive, it is necessary to stay flexible and informed. Don’t wait for the next pandemic to embrace the inevitable, assess your situation and create a roadmap for your future. In the end, we all want to provide the highest quality care for our patients and adopting useful and meaningful technology can help to do exactly that.