The Future of Interconnected Healthcare in the US will be Enabled and Constrained by Technology
If you know anything about my aversion to winter, it will probably not surprise you that I found myself out in Los Angeles recently for a conference. But what made this event important wasn’t the 70+ degree weather I found, but instead the unique mixture of healthcare providers, payers, and consultants all debating technology’s role in the costly and complex world of healthcare. (Providers are the hospitals, doctors and clinics, while the Payers are the insurance plans like Blue Cross/Blue Shield and United Healthcare.) If there was an industry ripe for change and simplification, Healthcare is as much a poster child perhaps second only to our governmental bureaucracies.
While there were tons of fascinating discussions, I was particularly captivated by a speech by Robert Pearl, who is not only a doctor, but also the CEO of The Permanente Medical Group─ the largest medical group in the nation. He sees a unique opportunity for change being created by the intersection of three overwhelming forces: Consumerism, Unaffordability and Technology.
Consumerism is increasing the public’s focus on the quality of healthcare, as well as the convenience of its delivery. Telemedicine has already started to deliver on some of these expectations as Dr. Pearl shared over 70% of rashes are being diagnosed remotely in their health system. The 5 Star ratings of Medicare offer a great example of how quality measures can be communicated in a way that steers reimbursement and uptake.
As to Unaffordability, we’ve all heard the dire warnings in the media and with the rollout of the ACA. He sees this becoming a problem on both the micro and macroeconomic levels. On Main Street, families are struggling to make ends meet with 25% of their income directed to healthcare. And on a national level, he predicts our nation could be seeing 36% of our GDP consumed by Healthcare by 2036! We have seen medical costs increasing between 6-12% over the last decade or so while wages have not grown much more than 2-3%. No matter what paycheck someone is starting from, those trend lines don’t come together as cost increases quickly outstrip income.
The bright spot in this dire story of limited resources and rising expectations is that technology is arriving at a key moment to help.
1) Mobile
Dr. Pearl points out that change can be easier to implement these days as consumers have already purchased Healthcare’s service delivery vehicle in the form of a smartphone that enables mobile access to data, video streaming, and constant connectivity.
2) Self-Sufficiency
Consumers are interested in taking control of their health and its delivery. Self-scheduling tools are meeting the patient’s where they are in the midst of their busy lives.
3) Fixed Cost Equipment leads to Discount Deals
Since most providers have machinery such as CT scanners sitting unused more often than not, there’s an opportunity for hospitals and physicians to open their tech up to consumers. St. Luke’s Hospital is advertising on the radio for their $50-125 Heart Scan service which uses a 64-slice CT scan for technologists to create a clear, two-dimensional view of the heart and arteries. This is effectively monetizing a fixed investment with a service that’s typically not covered by insurance, so folks are paying at time of service.
4) Using Big Data to Predict Events
This is a huge area of hope for the nexus of technology and healthcare. If certain medicines combine with lifestyle or genetic characteristics to create potential conditions, we should have the identifying precursors and post-event claims in our data we’ve collected. Like other industries, data analytics offers a huge hope for removing the guesswork from events and causation.
As you can see from Dr. Pearl’s comments, there is a lot to hope for in the future of American healthcare; however, it will be a difficult technological road forward for several reasons we’ll cover in a future blog post.
For employers, we play a meaningful part in this discussion as the U.S. healthcare system sees employers as often the plan sponsor and funding source. If our providers and our payers are going to work together well, it’s going to require our voice as part of the conversation. Things are only going to get more technical, regulated and complex unless we demand our needs and those of our employees are taken into consideration.
Do you have a story to share on where you see the future of Healthcare in America headed? Please comment below or tweet your thoughts to me at @HRTechKaiser. I’d love to hear from you! Also, please click the subscribe button above to receive notifications of new blog postings.