Next week Perficient will be hosting a webinar focusing on patient engagement leveraging Oracle technology. The webinar, Transforming Healthcare through Patient Engagement Using Oracle Solutions, will be hosted by Perficient’s Melody Smith Jones, Manager of Healthcare Collaborative Technologies, and Lesli Adams, Director of Oracle BI and Healthcare. I spoke with Melody and Lesli to find out more about patient engagement and Oracle’s role.
Q1: What methods have e-Patients turned to in order to successfully manage their own health?
Lesli: They Google, self-diagnose and self-treat. Using Patient Engagement technology allows for the patient’s “view” of clinical information to be personally relevant to them and also for the provider to engage them when it is convenient, 2am or 4pm.
Melody: Engaged patients are looking to be healthful. There are many ways to improve health, but all include getting gaining access to valuable information. This can be a search for healthcare content online, a request for healthcare advice via patient portal, the number of steps tracked on our FitBit, or a consumer genomic test to understand what health issues a patient could have genetic precursors for.
Q2: What effects have Meaningful Use and Accountable Care Organizations had on Patient Engagement?
Melody: There are multiple forces that are currently pushing on the healthcare industry to increase patient engagement. Meaningful Use does this through inclusion of patient engagement measures, or ways of sharing information with patients, in Stage 2. Accountable Care does this through giving patients a seat at the table during decision-making. The third is a somewhat independent market movement of patients pushing to be engaged. Ultimately, the effect of all of these is to place the patient at the center of the healthcare transaction, which they have not traditionally been a part of since they are not in the middle of the financial transaction like in other industries.
Lesli: Besides the legislated requirement to “count” how many people are using portals, patients will discover the history of information available and the holistic approach to their care. The days of chasing lab results or pharmacy refills will soon be history. Let’s remember, MU and ACO are low bar measures designed to get information connected and transferred. Hospitals and physicians using the framework as a way to catapult their clinical experience with the patient will lead to increased visibility to care measures and adherence to treatment protocols.
Q3: What role can providers play in engaging patients in their care?
Lesli: Providers are the most influential non-family person affecting the care of the patient. They diagnose and write the prescription. They are the doorway to care. Having the provider adopt the patient engagement model of appointing, care guidelines, and results enables the patient to feel empowered about their care. It is no longer a “black box” or “secret” but available for them to know. Equally, in the case of a Diabetic who is being told to cut down on the sugar 2x a year when the HgA1c result is returned can be empowered to see that they are being goaled to a target, and the triangulation of behaviors (reduced sugar, healthier eating, adherence to medication therapy) improves their outcomes (HgA1c, LDL). It’s not just “oh I have to” but now they see why and how.
Melody: In other industries we have witnessed a push towards being “consumer centric”. Ultimately, a patient centric healthcare culture, though it sounds common sense, is a bit of a dramatic departure requiring investment in all of those ways patients engage with their health.
Q4: How is Oracle’s suite of Healthcare solutions equipped to enhance Patient Engagement?
Melody: The Oracle suite includes both portal and content management tools that are fundamental to the drive towards a more engaged patient community. Even further, Oracle has considered the mobile and social components of information sharing that allow providers to provide this information using the information gathering methods patients are already using.
Lesli: With WebCenter as a patient facing tool supported with Endeca and OBIEE analytics and data mining, Oracle has invested in taking data from discovery, through analysis, to decision making.
To hear more about Patient Engagement and Oracle from Melody and Lesli, please join our webinar on April 17th.
