Connected care is more than IT interfaces or interoperability

Jan. 20, 2016 / By Kristine Daynes

Connected care is a popular concept in the healthcare IT world. Commonly, it is used in conversations about interoperability, mobile applications, patient portals, wearable devices, and telehealth. These technologies will certainly shape healthcare in the next decade. But they don’t represent the real opportunities and challenges of connected care.

The focus of connected care is not to build ever-more-impressive technology, but to foster relationships. As my colleague Dr. Gordon Moore points out, the relationship between a primary care physician and a patient is significantly related to patient outcomes. With or without mobile apps, patient portals, or telehealth, it’s the strength of the relationship that matters most.

As a consumer, I have relatively few true relationships with businesses or service providers. Most of my business transactions are impersonal exchanges to get something I want for a swipe of my credit card or a tap of my smartphone. This is what healthcare could become if technology and efficiency were all that mattered—a transaction.

Relationships are based on elements you don’t expect in an efficient transaction: shared interests, rapport, respect, and mutual benefit, for example. This is especially true in healthcare. Impersonal, one-way communication and efficiency-optimized offices are not relationships (which explains, in part, why some of us ignore postcard reminders for annual mammograms).

Million-dollar technologies like telehealth, mobile apps, and patient portals can do a lot to foster interaction between patients and providers. But they won’t do much to strengthen the patient-provider relationship unless they support some fundamental goals. Here are just a handful of ways that technology can make the interaction more meaningful:

1. Start a meaningful dialogue. Moore says that if you want to know a patient’s clinical risk, just ask them. While asking the right questions might not always be simple, there are practical ways to stimulate dialog and generate meaningful patient-reported data, such as using a health confidence tool or 3M AssessMyHealth.

2. Track continuity and timeliness of care. Any consumer who gets regular, reliable service is more likely to be satisfied. These characteristics are strongly associated with good patient outcomes, too.

3. Measure quality in a way that supports relationships. Too many quality metrics can get in the way of quality outcomes, including provider-patient conversations. Providers can’t always choose their programs metrics. But when they can, they tend to focus on distinct outcomes-based measures such as risk-adjusted health status, composite value scores, and preventable utilization. These metrics represent both the clinical and financial aspects of care—a way of measuring and connecting care across settings, providers, and service lines in a way that different users can understand.

4. Focus on patient health first, not the disease. Many patients find it challenging to live with two or more health problems. They don’t manage their health one disease a time, so neither should providers. Their socio-economic situation may also complicate how well they adhere to advice. Primary care physicians know this and respond to it, whether that means talking face to face with the patient, emailing through a patient-physician portal, consulting via a web-based video, or capturing notes in a mobile tablet application. Patients, not technology, drive the conversation.

Kristine Daynes is marketing manager for payer and regulatory markets at 3M Health Information Systems.