Melody Smith Jones, Author at Perficient Blogs

2017 Trends: Mobile Demand Creates Connectivity Challenges

Melody Smith Jones — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 21:00:45 +0000

We will continue to explore the top 5 healthcare provider trends for 2017. My previous posts in this blog series highlighted our first two trends: Handing the Patient Portal Reins to the Patient and Connecting the Patient to Connected Health. In our third trend we will look at how the increased demand for mobile will create connectivity challenges.

Healthcare organizations are beginning to realize that enabling consumer engagement and population health strategies are not possible unless the capability of effectively and efficiently communicating across care venues and systems exists as well. This calls upon Connected Health and Interoperability solutions to work together in new, mission critical, ways.

This is a big ask considering the increasingly complex care continuum that matches patient to care provider. At the same time, in this time of mobile health and the internet of things, we must also consider the balance between greater data access versus greater data security. Explore this trend in further detail, and match your current state to the state this trend requires, in our top 5 healthcare provider trends for 2017 guide.

Attending HIMSS17? Stop by and see us at booth #3831 and lets talk healthcare industry trends. More on Perficient at HIMSS here.

2017 Trends: Connecting the Patient to Connected Health

Melody Smith Jones — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 00:38:45 +0000

Our 2017 healthcare provider trend guide reveals the top 5 trends healthcare provider trends in 2017. These trends will help identify and prioritize technology investments in order to transform data into powerful knowledge that can enhance the patient experience and improve your overall business. My last post highlighted our first trend, Handing the Patient Portal Reins to the Patient. In today’s post we will look at the second trend, Connecting the Patient to Connected Health.

The way that healthcare will be delivered ten years from now is in stark contrast to the current state of affairs. Healthcare organizations across the nation currently have their sights set upon the world of telehealth for this reason. By and large, these organizations are partnering with telehealth vendors instead of looking forward into the vastly different healthcare industry we will have years from now and asking, “are we plotting upon the right roadmap now to become the healthcare leader of the future?”

However, the largest mistake being made with telehealth pilots and programs is the “if we build it they will come” mentality that is at the core of most telehealth plans. Much of this is predicated upon an illusion that once telehealth programs are erected, patients will easily move into this wildly different way of receiving care. Unfortunately, patients are demonstrating that they will not engage without the correct onboarding infrastructure. This infrastructure is based off of two key elements, which are explored in full detail in our guide, Top 5 Healthcare Provider Trends for 2017.

Attending HIMSS17? Stop by and see us at booth #3831 and lets talk healthcare industry trends. More on Perficient at HIMSS here.

2017 Trends: Handing the Patient Portal Reins to the Patient

Melody Smith Jones — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 16:40:29 +0000

Once again we have compiled our trends guide for healthcare providers and this year the top 5 healthcare provider trends in 2017 focus on the importance of leveraging the power of data. These trends will help identify and prioritize technology investments in order to transform data into powerful knowledge that can enhance the patient experience and improve your overall business. Lets take a look at the first trend, Handing the Patient Portal Reins to the Patient.

Given that most industry changes leading to patient data access came by way of Meaningful Use, the dismantling of Stage 2 gave us all the opportunity to pause and reflect. In our 2014 Connected Health trends report, we estimated that between 2015-2017 there would be a major shift in the state of patient portal. Here we are in 2017, and we could not have imagined how right we would be.

During the Meaningful Use Era, we were using a checklist to determine the features best suited for engaging with the patient when really we needed to be looking for the market-driven features that would truly create a habit forming technology on the part of the patient. The market-driven patient portal era is where we find ourselves now, but what would those habit forming components include?

Download our guide, Top 5 Healthcare Provider Trends for 2017 to take a closer look at this trend.

Attending HIMSS17? Stop by and see us at booth #3831 and lets talk healthcare industry trends. More on Perficient at HIMSS here.

The Connected Health Answer to the Addiction Epidemic

Melody Smith Jones — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 13:00:05 +0000

Addiction to opiates is having a major impact on the health of patient populations around the country. In fact, one sobering statistic states that more Americans died in 2014-2015 from drug overdoses than died during the entire Vietnam war. Addiction is our nation’s epidemic. It’s hitting my very own patient population here in Cincinnati especially hard. Within a 6 day period this past August, we experienced an “unprecedented” 174 heroin overdoses. Combine this with the fact that we double the national average for individuals living below the poverty level and you have a challenging public health issue.

These factors, among many others, were buzzing about my mind when I was perusing this year’s Connected Health Symposium agenda. As such, the panel discussion entitled “Digital Therapies Can Offer a Breakthrough for Treating Addictions” definitely made it to my short list of sessions to attend. The panel included:

Corey McCann, MD, PhD, CEO, Pear Therapeutics
Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, Founder, Claritas MindSciences; Director of Research, UMASS Medical School Center for Mindfulness
Charles Curie, MA, ACSW, Principal and Founder, The Curie Group, LLC
Chris Pesce, Co-Founder & COO, Sober Grid

Following are some of the best insights gleaned from the panel discussion as well as some of my thoughts on how we can move the digital health bar forward to span the digital divide into areas with increased poverty.

Sober Grid Smartphone App

Sober Grid is an interesting app to consider for the 45 million people struggling with addiction in our country. In addition to the more standard features of an addiction application, peer support provided through the app remove barriers for many people that may not be able to attend a meeting. One factor that Chris Pesce said weighed heavily on the application’s development was that addiction has been treated acutely, but it is actually a chronic condition. He mentioned that relapse reaches 90% within a year of leaving treatment. However, if you treat addiction chronically, that gives patients the support they need when they need in order to prevent relapse. He also spoke of how, in the future, the application will be able to use predictive analytics to predict who may relapse and provide proactive intervention.

Here is where my thoughts, and my question to the panel, fits in. My main concern with Sober Grid is that it is only available as a smartphone app. Yes, there is 98% adoption of cellphone technology, but only just over half of the population has a smartphone. Think of the power this platform could have if it was developed within a responsive web platform similar to Patients Like Me and/or provided text message capabilities like Text4Baby. Oftentimes those of us in technology end up using our own lifestyle as the foundation for development. We need to look beyond ourselves for treatments that will matter for the entire population.

Center for Mindfullness

Judson Brewer is an addiction psychiatrist out of the Center for Mindfullness at the University of Massachusetts. This group is taking evidence based theraputetics to see how they can deliver treatments in the digital age. They have innovated around treatments for smoking cessation and eating addiction that are delivered both in person and increasingly online. He stated that there are some deficiencies in how these treatments can be delivered efficaciously following the principles behind cognitive behavioral therapy with links to outcomes.

Central Kansas Foundation

According to Charles Curie, of the 26 million inpatients this past year…wait for it…1/3 had mental health or addiction issues. For that reason, I found myself most interested in what he had to say about the Central Kansas Foundation. This group has developed protocols that include screening and intervention in the emergency room, which is a key location for screening for intervention. They have 65 employees in 7 locations, and they have drastically reduced the number of impatient stays and ED use because people are stationed in the acute areas of emergency departments and inpatient areas. The staff determines if the patients can they benefit from a brief intervention or longer treatment, and there are clear pathway to the appropriate treatment with assessment for medication.

Now, let’s imagine patient populations across the country with a framework like this matched with a peer support network with ongoing 24/7 connectedness.

Barriers to Implementation

The barriers to implementation are many. There is no lack of evidence to show the efficacy in using digital treatments for addiction, but, as I am sure you can guess, lack of reciprocity prohibits practitioners from utilizing these methods of care. The powers that be aren’t necessarily inclined to open up more codes available for reimbursement.

However, there is the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA), which helps the reimbursement issue. MHPAEA requires group health plans and health insurance issuers to remove restrictions to ensure that financial requirements and treatment limitations to mental health or substance use disorders are no more strenuous than other treatments. The challenge is that reimbursement for digital care is impacted across the board. So, unless we can move the bar forward for reimbursement for connected health treatments more broadly, then we have little luck of MHPAEA moving the ball forward for addiction and mental health issues.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the session a simple set of conclusions was reached. Digital health works well for the treatment of addiction. However, we are struck by the challenge of whether these treatments can scale and whether they can be funded.

That Time I Had My Emotions Sensed Live at Connected Health 2016

Melody Smith Jones — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 14:33:18 +0000

I have lots of fun times at the Connected Health Symposium, but this year was extra special. Part of the reason was because when the moderator of “Emotion Sensing – The Next Big Trend?” asked “Would anyone like to volunteer to have their emotions sensed and documented for all to see?” my hand shot up like a rocket, and, much to my delight, I was selected. Allow me to elaborate.

Over the past two years, creating a device that captures the data that our bodies radiate daily has been a thriving trend. On the consumer side we see this most readily in the world of Apple Health and wearables we all know and (sometimes) love, like FitBit. Stay tuned early next year when a device called Priya should enter the scene, which, among other things, will alert a woman and her partner when her body’s data signifies the conditions are right to conceive a child. This year is the first I’ve seen biofeedback turn towards the world of behavioral health. I mentioned the glass brain as one such innovation that blew my mind, and within this session we discussed several more including the Sensoree device I blogged about two years back. However, the star of this post is an application called Affectiva that maps facial patterns in order to sense emotion. The results of my volunteer efforts provided a giant rendering of my face to all Connected Health Symposium attendees. Good thing I’m not shy.

“I mostly registering joy…”

A couple of things I noticed immediately when interacting with Affective. The first was that my joy measures were off the charts. Anger was not at all present. I also did not register nervousness. None of this is surprising to me. Anger isn’t an emotion I call on all too often, and I’m fortunate that I do not get nervous on stage. However, I also wondered if this could be because joy is a much easier emotion to sense given the technology. Nervousness can be portrayed in all sorts of ways. Some people experience nervous laughter, and that could then register as joy instead of nervousness. I imagine in some nervousness could present as open hostility. So, for the most part, I think that innovations like this are definitely moving the bar forward, but I’m much more interested in the use of other forms of biofeedback, such as EGG and temperature/sweat gland production as the world of emotion sensing devices proliferate.

For now I leave you with the reaction to my on stage proclaimation that “I mostly register joy…” brought to you by my friends (new and old) in the great land of healthcare social media. Hopefully it makes you register some joy as well.

Connected Health 16: The Glass Brain Blew My Mind

Melody Smith Jones — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 19:24:27 +0000

As mentioned by my colleague, Juliet Silver, last week we had the good fortune of collecting in Boston for the annual Connected Health Symposium. This event takes place each October, and I learn more in the two days of the symposium than I do all year round. Now that I am on home turf, I can share my learnings because thoughts like to make friends. It’s their very nature. With that in mind, I guess we will start out with the mind…or…the glass brain to be more specific. This was presented by Dr. Adam Gazzeley in his keynote entitled “Technology Meets Neuroscience – A Vision of the Future of Brain Fitness”.

The Glass What?

Let’s first use our brain power to recollect two years ago when I mentioned that biofeedback was the big buzz at Connected Health 2014. The Sensoree technology made another appearance this year, but what caught my attention was an innovation that harnesses biofeedback in a powerful way that could absolutely change behavioral health forever. In scientific chatter, the glass brain is “a Unity3D brain visualization that displays source activity and connectivity, inferred in real-time from high-density EEG using methods implemented in SIFT and BCILAB“. In more common vernacular, smart people took brain biofeedback and provide a real-time animation that can be viewed in 3 dimensional space using a virtual reality headset.

For a demonstration, check out this video of Mickey Hart (drummer for the Grateful Dead) playing a game designed to give parts of his brain a workout. At the same time, an engineer is wearing a virtual reality device so that he can literally peer about and explore inside Mickey Hart’s brain.

Imagine a World

Now let’s imagine all of the real-world applications of this technology. One that immediately came to mind for me was the application the glass brain could have when used in conjunction with EMDR therapy to treat trauma. A doctor could literally view the brain processing in real-time and make real-time changes to treatment according to the way that the brain is working. There was also a discussion at the symposium of the overwhelming evidence that supports the use of behavioral health as a treatment for Type 2 Diabetes as shown in the chart below.

So, there you have it. This was my favorite learning at the 2016 Connected Health Symposium. Stay tuned for more subsequent posts on the topics of wearables used for emotion sensing as well as using digital devices to combat the addiction issues that are plaguing communities across the nation.

The 2 Act Play of Telehealth Patient Engagement

Melody Smith Jones — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 11:56:30 +0000

Many healthcare organizations have implemented telehealth pilots and programs under the premise of “if we build it they will come”. Unfortunately, patients are demonstrating that they will not engage without the correct onboarding infrastructure. This infrastructure is based off of two key elements or, shall we say, acts of this great play towards healthcare everywhere.

Act 1: Build Consumer Awareness

No two patient populations are the same. Therefore, creating a plan that generates awareness amongst your unique patient population, or sets of patient populations, and draws them towards a first interaction is key to igniting telehealth engagement. It’s easy to understand that what will work in New York City will not work within southern Mississippi. However, it is much harder for organizations to consider that what will work in Wassau, Wisconsin will not work in Madison, Wisconsin just a short two hour drive away.

Using models for converting unknown consumers into patients and utilizing telehealth systems as population health enablers, an organization must design consumer awareness programs that are the right fit for their unique patient engagement challenges.

Act 2: Create Habit Forming Technology

When you think about it, some social media and mobile technologies have motivated us to do some pretty bizarre behaviors as daily habits. Over the span of just a few short years, billions are using these technologies as day-to-day habits that require little to no conscious thought. How’d the Facebooks and Mint.coms of the world do it?

Creating habit forming technologies requires us to consider the hook model, and the brain science it depends on, to create technologies that change habits. This requires us to consider telehealth in a completely different light. Most provider organizations are looking for the telehealth vendor or homegrown system that will meet their internal needs. In doing so they are forgetting that this system must provide ongoing value, through a habitualized system, for telehealth to meet the aims of lower cost care. A content strategy specifically tailored to making telehealth technologies habit forming will do just that.

Steering Clear of Comedy and Tragedy

The number of patients using telehealth services is expected to jump from the 350,000 in 2013 to about seven million by 2018. One gregarious healthcare CEO has been quoted as saying that upwards of 80% of care will be online in ten years. However, there are still some barriers preventing its wide-spread use. The main barrier, as shown from telehealth pilots within our industry, is a lack of patient adoption, and without patient adoption we have no telehealth play at all.

Why Predictive Analytics & Connected Health Are New BFFs

Melody Smith Jones — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 19:30:39 +0000

I had a fun conversation recently about a patient population that is near and dear to my heart. Near because, well, I am a member of this particular patient population, and dear because, even though I grew up in San Diego, I consider myself a Cincinnatian by heart. Long live the Queen City.

The conversation stemmed from discussions on the use of predictive analytics for the most oft mentioned subset of pretty much every patient population: diabetes patients. I’ve long joked that we healthcare technologists have a Diabetes Mention Punchcard and each ten mentions gets us a free snow cone. As part of this conversation, my data and analytics kin here at Perficient were using the power of predictive analytics to predict the behaviors of diabetes patients. As such, I will be guaranteed at least two snow cones by the end of this post.

One of the chief concerns within this discussion was readmissions of diabetes patients. Which diabetes patients can we predict will be readmitted? Why will these diabetes patients be readmitted? It’s all very fascinating work. Going beyond the buzzword of readmissions (we have a punchcard for that term as well) I had some other questions about the Cincinnati diabetes population that I contributed to the predictive analytics discussion:

What diabetes patients are most likely to use the emergency department as their primary method of care?
What diabetes patients are most likely to be diagnosed with costly myocardial infarction?

The reason I asked these two questions is because I know that there are healthcare organizations that have studied these two issues and found interesting correlations. In this case it is University of Southern California (by way of Los Angeles County Hospital) and Kaiser Permanente, respectively. The power of predictive analytics provides us with so much useful data that can have an incredible impact on rates or readmission and disease state for diabetes patients in Cincinnati and beyond.

But Here’s the Catch

What do you do with this data once you have it? Let’s say you know what diabetes patients are most likely to be readmitted. You know what diabetes patients will use the emergency department as their primary method of care. You know what diabetes patients are most likely to be diagnosed with myocardial infractions. Now what? How do you actually exact the change that will motivate and incentivize the necessary shifts in habitual behaviors? This, my friend, is precisely why predictive analytics and Connected Health are best friends forever. Let me demonstrate how Connected Health is actually used to solve these predictable outcomes:

Text Messaging Programs that Change Diabetes Patient Habits: A Connected Health medium that is both low cost and highly effective at changing habits is text messaging. In fact, Los Angeles County Hospital used a text messaging program to make effective change in dissuading the use of the emergency department but also increased adherence to diabetes care protocols by study participants more generally. This, in turn, can also solve for the myocardial infarction issue as, Kaiser Permanente learned, by adding three simple pharmaceuticals to the diabetes care protocol with protocol reminders as part of the text message therapy.
Conversation Therapy to Reduce Readmissions: Perficient had the great pleasure recently to be selected among three Adobe partners to demonstrate the power of the Adobe Mobile platform specifically within the healthcare industry. In this case we used data around reducing readmissions for the sickest of the sick post op heart care patients, and data from a study at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, to design a conversational therapy application called Daily Dose that is used to not only set a schedule around discharge instructions but also provide the case manager/social worker with the ability to communicate with the patient post discharge. The most important corollary in the Hahnemann study was to get that patient in for their follow up appointments, and this is one of the core use cases the mobile application is designed around. This same mobile conversation therapy method can be used to help reduce readmissions for those diabetes patients we predict are most at risk.

So, there you have it. This is why predictive analytics and Connected Health are now the best of friends. This is also why I am going to spend the rest of my day enjoying my free snow cones.

The Strategic Hierarchy We Forget in Healthcare Digital Strategy

Melody Smith Jones — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 00:25:14 +0000

There are quite a few fallacious assumptions made in the construction of digital strategy. One of the most common ones I witness is confusion between strategy and roadmap. When I take the necessary time to review an organization’s existing digital strategy documentation, more often than not I am presented with a document that outlines an assessment of where an organization is versus where they want to be. What they fail to understand is that strategy is not a map from the here to the then. Instead, a strategy is about composing the patterns of decision making necessary to occupy the precise positioning within a complex market that will set an organization up for the most success for their specific engagement drivers.

Another common veil of mystery that becomes uncovered for our clients is when they understand the strategic hierarchy within which a digital strategy must be placed. A digital strategy created in a vacuum is a digital strategy that will sit on a shelf looking pretty and not much else. If you want a digital strategy that does more than look pretty and not say much then it needs to take and give the appropriate calls within the strategic hierarchy.

Introducing the Strategic Hierarchy

At the very top of the hierarchy you have the overriding organization strategy. This is the parent to all other strategies, and if it either doesn’t exist or is not appropriately communicated across the organization, then the strategic problems of that organization will be fundamental to their challenges. I worked with one organization that definitely had an organizational strategy but the only individuals that knew about it were the C-level and the board members. How can a strategy be implemented if it is not successfully communicated to those that can put these plans in motion?

On the next level of this strategic hierarchy you have the Marketing Strategy, the IT Strategy, and the strategies for strategic business units or service lines. These strategies are important. They take their call from organizational strategy, but they have some important things to say as well. The Marketing Strategy will translate the organizational strategy into its particular set of core competencies. The same is true for technology and other parts of the business.

Now we get to the digital strategy. As you can see, it lives within an ecosystem, and becomes the umbrella strategy for how an organization will position all of those technologies that are used to connect people to people or people to knowledge. These are the human and behavior centric technology decisions and, rightfully so, they need to be informed by the parent strategies. However, this strategy then becomes the parent to such strategies as the social media strategy, the content strategy (in terms of web content management), the mobile strategy, and the loyalty strategy (typically dominated by CRM these days but will evolve into more sophisticated Member 360/Patient 360 ecosystems over the next few years).

Getting Strategy Right

Quite frankly, when I see activities like social media fail within an organization it is oftentimes because social media becomes “the cute thing marketing does” instead of being completely plugged in to the unique solutions it can provide to the drivers that matter to the entire organization. A social media strategy that is connected to the organization evolves away from being a press release conduit and towards a medium for population health education and converting unknown consumers into patients. It can only do so when it is properly seated within the strategic hierarchy.

Digital Strategy that Changes Healthcare from the Outside In

Melody Smith Jones — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 16:18:29 +0000

When it comes to digital solutions in healthcare I hear a lot about introducing a retail strategy. Sure, there is a lot to gain by peeking our heads over the fence at other industries so that we can learn and implement successfully upon the expectations our healthcare consumers have gained with their experience outside of healthcare. After all, patients only spend 1% of their lifetime in a clinical care setting. As healthcare consumers we only have, on average, four visits to the doctor per year. We have to use digital tools to connect to them during the other 99% of the time they are interacting with everything but healthcare.

However, in the healthcare industry, we need our digital tools to achieve some pretty lofty, and oftentimes nebulous, aims. We have to innovate digital solutions around complex issues such as “patient wait time” and “readmission rates” and “enabling patient decisions around cost of care”. Sure, we have a lot to learn from retail, but how can we implement digital strategy based on an industry that doesn’t have:

A consumer navigating price and cost issues with an industry where price and cost are typically a wildcard for everyone
A digital journey that needs to account for the needs of both a consumer and a patient as the same person
A digital journey that incorporates the needs of “patients by proxy” in the form of caregivers that act on behalf of a patient that is unable to act on their own accord
Navigating a relationship where our industry is the guardian of the world’s most sensitive data
Considering the relationship we need to form with each individual in the context of the larger aims towards population health and accountable care

Such an environment requires us to consider digital strategy in an entirely different light.

Changing Healthcare from the Outside In

When it comes to the construction of sound digital strategy, that can aptly hold ground for an organization’s social, mobile, web, portal, and loyalty activities, I prefer to change healthcare from the outside in. What does this mean, exactly? Well, first of all, it means releasing our strategy from the confines of stakeholder opinions. More so it means transforming strategy into a breeding ground for learning opportunities based off of a research exploration of data found through both internal and external analysis that comes by way of three distinct phases that are a part of a methodology that enables digital transformation.

Envision: This first phase is the great exploration by way of diving into the data that matters. Yes, it’s important to have a stakeholder meeting in order to not only create a vision but also to ensure that those across the organization feel beholden to that vision in a meaningful way. More importantly, though, we must create a learning system. We must learn from the patient population. I’ve personally studied many, from New York City to Southern Mississippi to Los Angeles, and the only truth among all of them is that there are no two patient populations that are the same. I once had the opportunity to create digital strategy for two different health systems that were within driving distance of each other at the same exact time. Those two strategies couldn’t have been more different, and that was mostly because their patient populations were so different. We also need to study competitors. I often say that a well executed competitive analysis is, in and of itself, a competitive advantage. A peek inward at an exploration of business challenges weighed against an understanding of the market will also provide key findings. Navigating through this data without getting lost along the way takes experience, but the value of this exploration makes it the most necessary component of changing healthcare from the outside in.
Execute: There is nothing more tragic than a digital strategy that does nothing more than sit on a shelf due to lack of proper execution. On the other hand, in my opinion, there is nothing quite as beautiful as seeing really good strategy very well executed. I have literally sat in the Apple store and the Aldi grocery chain just to watch good strategy executed with precision. The challenge lies in taking a pragmatic approach to digital strategy. By understanding the data, we can identify the top corollaries that will truly ignite change in the issues that matter. We can create a strategy that creates the patterns of decisions necessary to ignite that change. We then create a roadmap that realistically maps the tactics that drive that change over time. Such a roadmap not only has the benefit of the underlying data but also an understanding of such things as data integrations and culture changes that need to take place in order to make the strategy successful.
Evolve: Successful digital adaptation is a marathon and not a sprint. We not only need to ensure that the digital technologies solutions that are created are reliable but we also need to evolve our vision, and resulting strategy, over time to ensure our investments receive the greatest useful shelf life. This requires us to have a data driven strategy that can not only be monitored but become a learning system itself by way of a consistent feedback loop.

Many forget that digital solutions are, in and of themselves, a breeding ground for actionable data insights. For digital strategy to be successful, and meet the needs of an industry with collaboration demands unlike any other industry, we need to change healthcare from the outside in.

2016 Connected Health Trends: Telehealth & Healthcare Everywhere

Melody Smith Jones — Wed, 25 May 2016 19:26:42 +0000

And here is our last trend in Connected Health for 2016. As we mentioned at the top of the list, we opted not to publish the posts in our ranked order. We actually want to get your opinion on the matter first. Then, to see our order, you can download the full 2016 Connected Health trends report. So, could this very last trend be the very first trend on the list? It could be since we find ourselves in a world where these real life patient stories still exist:

In Cincinnati, a man boards a MegaBus bound for Chicago twice per month. Unlike the business travelers sitting next to him, he’s not lured by the promise of free Wi-Fi and power outlets. Rather, this Cincinnati native sits on a bus 12 hours round trip so that he can have access to a particular physician that specializes in treating his illness.
In rural Pennsylvania, a middle-aged woman is diagnosed with Stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme. Her doctor gives her three-to-six months to live, but the closest hospital is a one hour drive from her home. Not wanting to spend her remaining days in a hospital room so far from loved ones, her family takes shifts around the clock to provide her care during her battle with cancer.
In California, a young man is self-employed and dealing with the pressures of providing for a young family given tough economic circumstances. His family is self-insured under a high-deductible plan, and he finds it difficult to make room in his busy schedule to sit in a waiting room for a preventive care visit or to correctly manage his diabetes protocol.

These three real life stories bring us to the very heart of Connected Health where we find this definition:

“Connected Health is a model for healthcare delivery that uses technology to provide healthcare remotely.”

In this sense, Connected Health has enjoyed an upward swing in investment over the past couple of years. Innovations in healthcare technology are being used to provide innovative treatment options to these individuals and millions more like them across the nation. However, that swing will begin to dominate this year as telehealth vendors begin to gain traction by way of partnerships with both health plans and healthcare providers and reimbursement policies continue to mature. In order to gain readiness for this adoption of telehealth we need:

Digital transformation within healthcare organizations that allow patients and clinicians to come together in the design and maintenance of care programs. At the very heart of “healthcare everywhere” we find digital transformation. In fact, a healthcare organization’s readiness for healthcare everywhere can easily be mapped against the digital transformation maturity curve. This requires an examination of seven different attributes of an organization: 1) Patient/Member Insight, 2) Strategy, 3) Design Process, 4) Enabling Technologies, 5) Measurement, 6) Operations, and 7) Culture. With insights from these seven attributes, your organization’s readiness for healthcare everywhere can be assessed and a realistic plan for future adoption can be created.
Adoption of interoperability and data exchange standards. Digital transformation helps map out the use of digital technologies across the care paradigm. These innovations place demand on both the EHR and health information exchange technologies, which will unquestionaby benefit from interoperability. The many data collection devices required for telehealth need to be tied together with bidirectional standardized messages. The future of interoperability is to bind together a wide network of real-time, life-critical data that not only transform healthcare but become the new way of providing healthcare.

The advancement of telehealth technology is breaking down barriers around the world, and can reduce spiraling medical costs as a result. Telehealth can provide our Cincinnati MegaBus traveler with the ability to provide medical data to his Chicago physician remotely. Virtual visits give him a way to meet with his physician without the long commute. Remote patient monitoring has proven extremely effective in treating cancer and in helping reach patients that live in rural locations. This would provide great comfort to the family in Pennsylvania. Telehealth would also help our busy father care for his chronic diabetes and get the necessary preventive care he needs to be in optimum health.

The Year of Telehealth is just one of the trends we explore in our new guide, The Definitive Guide to Connected Health 2016: 10 Trends You Need to Know. Download the guide to see where this trend falls and to discover the other Connected Health trends healthcare executives must be aware of. In the guide we also provide insights to help organizations not only survive – but thrive – in the age of consumer-driven healthcare.

2016 Connected Health Trends: Mega Merger Meets Member Experience

Melody Smith Jones — Tue, 24 May 2016 19:24:27 +0000

Creating the Connected Health trends report requires us to, among other things, mine through approximately 30,000 news coverage points per year. Circulating through the news in 2015 we found much on the topic of the new world of health insurance. Big news on this front was the industry consolidation under a string of potential mergers. We have Aetna and Humana, Anthem and Cigna, and UnitedHealthcare perusing their options as well. However, this story is not limited to the world of big plans. Smaller and mid-size plans are also moving with this consolidation trend.

From a Connected Health standpoint, we want to know how this health insurance mega merger will impact the member experience. There are many postulating on what this will mean from a cost of health plan standpoint. Some feel that the mega merger will increase the negotiating position of a now smaller group of insurers and, therefore, increase the cost of health plans. Others believe that the cost consolidations found in mergers will actually decrease the cost of health plans. Fewer are keeping their eye on the barriers of entry into the marketplace and the possibility for the “Geico for healthcare” entering the health insurance world. However, we are interested in the changes that will occur beyond the mechanics of the health insurance exchange. What impact will this mega merger have on the actual member experience?

In the short term we can make some assumptions about investments in member experience slowing or, in some cases, halting. In the short term there will be a hesitance to invest until merged systems can be combined. This is the big barrier of entry that big health insurance is leaving open for new entrants in the meanwhile. If, in the extended time it takes to make these mergers happen, new entrants can join to create a better member experience, then we could see some pretty dramatic shifts in the marketplace.

Given that in the post Accountable Care world many insurance products look very similar, health plans need to look for differentiation strategies that keep members engaged in their care as well as help them make sound choices from a cost of care perspective now that more of the decision making power is in their hands (and wallets). Here are a few favored options:

Wellness Strategy: One differentiating strategy that is gaining steam is the wellness strategy. Here we find insurers, like Humana with their HumanaVitality wellness program, creating digital tools to enable their member’s health. Humana more recently announced two new weight loss-focused partnerships with Weight Watchers and Kurbo Health to extend this strategy.
Member 360 Strategy: Here we are ripping pages from the retail industry playbook. We are using the volumes of health plan data and tying them together in a consumer centric data warehouse that we can then use to unify the member experience across all touch points, identify and focus on loyalty programs for the most valuable members, target members through personalized offers, create predictive analytics programs to enable cross-sell/up-sell, and, in the end, create the closed-loop analysis and continuous optimization.
Telehealth Programs: The industry finds itself in an interesting space from a telehealth perspective. While healthcare providers are finding difficulties around reimbursement, health insurance companies are offering telehealth programs themselves in order to increase revenues and decrease care costs in instances where members would typically use, say, urgent care or the emergency room. Last year, health plans such as UnitedHealthcare and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey were some of many insurers increasing their telehealth investments.

Regardless of the strategies we find health insurance plans using around member experience, the truth of the matter is that member experience will be in sharp focus in the year to come.

Health Plan Mega Mergers Impact Member Experience is just one of the trends we explore in our new guide, The Definitive Guide to Connected Health 2016: 10 Trends You Need to Know. Download the guide to see where this trend falls and to discover the other Connected Health trends healthcare executives must be aware of. In the guide we also provide insights to help organizations not only survive – but thrive – in the age of consumer-driven healthcare.