What You Should Know:

• A new report released by TytoCare, a virtual care company enabling accessible, high-quality primary care from home, revealed insights into how health plans and organizations can drive virtual care engagement.
• While key elements that patients value in virtual care offerings include cost and time savings, and the ability to reduce Emergency Department (ED) or urgent care visits, people want to see doctors they trust or and are more likely to adopt virtual care when recommended by their primary care physicians (PCPs).

Understanding and Improving Virtual Care Engagement

TytoCare, a virtual care company, has released a report on how health plans and organizations can increase virtual care engagement. The report is based on a survey of more than 1,000 Medicaid and commercial health plan members in the United States. Key findings include:

• 78% of respondents consider virtual healthcare offerings to be an important factor when selecting a healthcare plan.
• Time and cost savings are the top drivers for virtual healthcare adoption.
• A healthcare provider is more likely to influence the use of virtual care than a family member or an insurer.
• Clinician involvement is critical for both Medicaid and private insurance carriers.
• 90% are willing to forfeit the wait for their PCP to get quicker access to care in a crisis.

TytoCare’s Home Smart Clinic is a solution that combines their handheld remote examination device, AI-backed smart diagnosis support, and Tyto Engagement Labs to provide high-quality, accessible virtual care in the home.

The survey also found that 73% of respondents who utilized virtual care did so two or more times per year, with 46% using it three or more times. Additionally, 81.4% reported that they would be interested in using virtual care programs if they had access to specific devices that offered features above and beyond video calls.

In summary, patients value cost and time savings in virtual care offerings, but they are more likely to adopt virtual care when recommended by their primary care physicians. Clinician involvement is critical, and recommendations from family members or friends are less effective in motivating people to adopt virtual care. TytoCare’s Home Smart Clinic is a solution that drives engagement rates in virtual care by providing high-quality, accessible virtual care in the home.

Though we seldom see their use in our modern world and, even then, only in fiction, there was a time when it was common for people to actually use things like crystal balls and divining rods to try to uncover unknown yet valuable information. As unbelievable as it may seem, soothsayers peered into crystal balls aiming to help seekers look into the future for guidance, while prospectors would rely earnestly on divining rods as they attempted to locate underground riches of water or oil.

While we may still entertain such images in some of the literature, TV, and movie fantasies we enjoy, in our modern professional world, we tend to entrust industry predictions to those with real, practical knowledge of the business landscape, because they trek, mine, and drill there regularly.

The world of medtech is no different, and for me and my team, connected care is the ground we travel, excavate, and explore on a daily basis. As we venture further into 2023, here’s our perspective on some of the connected care trends we expect to see on the road ahead, from digital therapeutics to remote patient monitoring and clinical trial management.

Precision engagement is an emerging development within digital therapeutics

One of the fast-growing categories within medicine today is digital therapeutics (DTx), which is the delivery of evidence-based treatment through digital solutions that help prevent, manage, or treat a disorder or disease. One recent report valued the global DTx market at $4.2 billion in 2021 and predicted it would expand at a compound annual growth rate of 26.1% between 2022 and 2030, with other estimates projecting even faster growth.

Within DTx, the emergence of precision engagement is a development that holds great promise, especially for chronic conditions where day-to-day choices and behaviors have a significant impact on health outcomes—conditions like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.

While remote patient monitoring is clearly important for giving care teams visibility into the management of a patient’s condition in order to facilitate vital provider interventions, those living with chronic conditions requiring day-to-day management must also make dozens of additional decisions every day. But initiating provider interventions for all of these would simply not be possible nor even desirable. With diabetes, for example, these can range from food and exercise choices to the need to take medications or interact with a medical device, like a glucose monitor or an insulin pen or pump.

Enter precision engagement. Just as precision medicine can utilize a patient’s genetics or metabolic profile to uniquely fine-tune the dosing of a drug to an individual, precision engagement—with the help of AI and machine learning—can be used by digital health developers and physicians to program connected care platforms to issue electronic interventions or “nudges” that are uniquely tailored and helpful to the individual patient.

These digital nudges prompt a patient to take necessary actions throughout the day that are not only personalized to their needs but delivered in a way that is consistent with their lifestyle and preferences, leading to a better likelihood of engaging the patient and, ultimately, guiding them to better health outcomes. These digital interventions are known in behavioral medicine as just-in-time adaptive interventions or JITAI, and they are helping healthcare professionals use software to precisely engage the right patients with the right interventions at the right time.

With precision engagement, these solutions programmed into connected care platforms are able to digitally “learn” about an individual patient’s preferences from their responses to questions and from the daily decisions they make in their self-management as they engage with the platform’s corresponding app. This learning enables the software to personalize future digital nudges for the patient.

Precision engagement software might be used, then, to help identify the right moment of the day to generate a nudge, like suggesting the patient eat an apple or take a walk at a specific time of day because that’s when the individual is most receptive to such a suggestion.

Or, a digital nudge might involve time- or activity-triggered reminders, such as the need to take medication or to sync the patient’s medical device to the connected-care platform. It might even send the patient an encouraging message prompted by their reaching of a daily target, such as meeting a specific exercise goal.

Precision engagement can even tailor the type of communication used for nudges, from the use of a pop-up message or the suggestion of a video or article to the kind of voice used—maybe through empathy or even humor—to deliver the nudge. 

Precision engagement is one of the most exciting new developments within digital therapeutics, using digital health tools to deliver highly personalized, time-adaptive interventions in ways that lead to positive behavior change, extraordinary patient experiences, and improved health outcomes.

The need for greater RPM awareness is resulting in a measured pace of adoption

While necessity may have forced the issue for care teams during the pandemic regarding the adoption of telemedicine appointments, it turns out that remote patient monitoring (RPM) is still “one component of telehealth that has lagged,” according to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). In a Stat poll of 586 healthcare leaders taken by MGMA last year, the association found that 75% of medical practices had yet to offer RPM services.

Despite patients’ positive perspectives of RPM, demonstrated outcomes, payor recognition of RPM’s value, and the establishment of reimbursement mechanisms, the actual pace of RPM adoption has turned out to be more deliberate than these factors had originally led many to predict. In fact, in our work, we’ve found that a large part of preparing providers to make the actual leap to RPM adoption has really been a challenge of growing awareness.

For one thing, we’ve found that in the busy world of providing clinical care, some providers simply haven’t gotten a complete understanding of what RPM reimbursement looks like. So, we continue to chip away at the task of making sure our provider partners have the latest information.

And while some may have caught wind of RPM reimbursement, we’re coming across other providers who have the misconception that only Medicare reimburses for RPM. In reality, there are dozens of private payors covering RPM, with some reimbursing at even higher levels than Medicare. 

Another misconception we encounter among some providers is the mistaken belief that, to get reimbursement for RPM, they must implement every piece of it all at once, from getting patients set up and syncing their data to analyzing the data and providing patient consults. Not only is that not true, but the idea of such a weighty burden is partly why CMS has assigned unique CPT codes for discrete RPM activities. For many providers, implementing RPM is such a significant change management challenge that it actually makes the most sense for them to start small, which they can do by getting patients set up and focusing them on simply sharing their data remotely on a monthly basis. With that, providers can begin submitting for reimbursement, then build from there.

One of the most useful steps for providers unsure of where to begin is to find a reliable partner who specializes in RPM planning and implementation. Resources like AMA’s recently published 12-step RPM Playbook can help, as it covers every stage of establishing a fully operational RPM program.

Pandemic-induced use of decentralized clinical trials provided an up-close view of their efficiencies and is leading to increased adoption

Decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) are trials in which some or all study assessments are conducted at locations other than the investigator site via either tele-visits, mobile or local healthcare providers, local labs and imaging centers, home-delivered investigational products and/or mobile technologies. During the pandemic, when thousands of non-COVID trials—some 80%—were interrupted, virtual trial companies experienced an explosion in demand.

And if market projections are any indicator, demand for DCTs will continue to increase, with an analysis issued earlier this year projecting the global DCT market will grow from $6.1 billion in 2020 to nearly $16.3 billion in 2027.

While the need for social distancing that precipitated the sharp uptick in DCT demand may have subsided from its peak during the pandemic, it’s clear that continued demand for DCTs will be driven primarily by the efficiencies of the model that researchers witnessed first-hand during the pandemic.

One of the biggest advantages of DCTs is how they boost trial enrollment, as they often allow for patients to sign up and participate from home via remote monitoring. Remote participation opens trials and the benefits they provide to those living outside urban centers, which means the trend toward DCTs is also broadening the number and diversity of eligible enrollees.

DCTs can also reduce patient dropout rates and speed up study timelines, two of biggest challenges in life sciences R&D. And they help researchers realize significant cost savings from decreases in the number of physical trial sites and reductions in research staff and travel.

Driven by this wide range of efficiencies benefiting subjects, researchers, and study sponsors, it’s expected the demand for DCTs will continue to ramp this year and in the future.

Overall, we expect 2023 to be a year where our prospecting and development efforts in the connected care landscape will continue producing exciting advancements that will enable us to better support patients living with chronic conditions as well as the physicians and teams who care for them.

About Russ Johannesson

Russ Johannesson is Chief Executive Officer at Glooko, a leading provider of connected care, patient engagement, digital therapeutics, and clinical trial optimization. Deployed in over 30 countries and 8,000 clinical locations, Glooko’s mission is to improve the lives of people with chronic conditions by connecting them with their caregivers and equipping both with digital health technology for improved outcomes.

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital health technologies across the healthcare industry. Digital transformation is now the top priority for many healthcare leaders as they seek to build resilient systems. At its core, this means implementing emerging digital technologies to modify essential operations, processes, and services to ease staff workload and withstand future challenges.

The primary drivers of digital transformation are consumerism, cost, and experience/expectations, each largely stemming from the pandemic. According to the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, health systems are considering emerging digital technologies as the conduit to transform their relationship with consumers and increase staff efficiency and satisfaction. In fact, 92% relayed that increased consumer satisfaction and engagement are the top outcomes facilities aim to achieve from digital transformation, followed by improved care quality at 56%. Additional top outcome goals include enhancing the patient experience, IT/cybersecurity, clinical care delivery, and staff satisfaction.

As these goals and digital investments progress, the once golden standard of optimizing healthcare performance has shifted from the Triple Aim (enhancing the patient experience, improving population health, and lowering costs) to the Quadruple Aim, which factors the clinician’s well-being into the equation. Over the last few years, the pandemic has repeatedly demonstrated the effects of clinician burnout and how it impacts the patient experience, health outcomes, and financial costs. As healthcare organizations seek improvements to the patient experience, care quality, and costs, they must also consider the clinician’s well-being. Digital transformation holds the key to fully re-engineering healthcare processes for the better, which will benefit the patients, clinicians, and healthcare organizations overall.

Delivering Value and Operational Efficiency

Digital transformation isn’t about removing the human component but focuses on using technology at each step to optimize the experience for all parties. In healthcare, the transformation means adopting different tools to enable patients to take a more active role in their care journey while also reducing provider involvement in non-clinical tasks to increase their time with patients.

Advanced technology leverages capabilities that keep patients and healthcare professionals better connected, helping to address the Quadruple Aim. In most industries, the customer (or patient) is a significant part of the equation. This can be better mirrored and developed within the healthcare industry through interactive patient care systems leveraging open APIs. This allows added functionality via electronic health records (EHR) and integrations with existing systems such as nurse call, environmental controls, and meal ordering to drive patient satisfaction and operational efficiency. For example, the patient can change the room’s temperature, lower the lights, order a meal, and place a service request without needing facetime with a nurse. These systems give the patient a sense of independence and control in an unfamiliar space and allow staff to remain focused on care, improving healthcare experience and efficiency through digital enhancements. 

Digital Transformation provides new ways to deliver value and can do so in a variety of ways by integrating systems at scale. The benefits of these integrations range from supplying the patient the ability to self-schedule appointments on the front end to staff using advanced analytics and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to settle claims on the back end. The options are endless with an open API.

The ability to integrate data from different providers and systems into one easy-access platform, also known as interoperability, holds great promise for patient care and staff satisfaction. By leveraging a secure and advanced digital platform, patients can become more involved with their care. Patients can review their health records, check prescriptions, schedule appointments, request additional information from doctors, view lab results, and share health data with their providers. These tools also pair with personal devices, allowing individuals to navigate their health journey easily and safely from the comfort of their own phone, tablet, or even the television anytime, anywhere. 

At the point of care, integrations between the latest television technology and existing HIT applications are cost-effective and open the door to an enhanced patient experience with customized educational materials, easy communication methods, and improved collaboration tools. Integrations on the patient’s in-room television incorporate patients into their care, lowering costs and elevating satisfaction on all levels of the facility. When patients gain easy access to their health data, they’re empowered to make more informed decisions about the kind of care they would like to receive during and after hospital admission. Patients who are actively engaged in their own healthcare journeys see more improvement than passive participants. 

Outcome-Driven Acceleration

Empowering patients and families to be informed partners in their care improves outcomes while creating opportunities for staff to receive real-time patient feedback and make immediate adjustments to improve the patient experience. Digital transformation is accelerating healthcare using a focus on people — this means the patient experience, quality outcomes, and staff satisfaction come first. 

Transparency and open communication between patients, providers, and loved ones are at the heart of the people-focused approach and drives better results. This patient-centric focus must be at the center of every innovation and be based on listening to the consumer with empathy and putting the other person first (patient, family, and clinician). 

For example, innovative technologies that address patient pain points have been frequently leveraged to reduce new barriers. During the height of the pandemic, as necessary infection controls resulted in separation between families and admitted patients, tools such as video chat integrated with the television system in patient rooms were able to return comfort as patients could communicate virtually with their loved ones. This technology continues to be utilized and returns trust between patients and providers, reduces family separation, eases anxiety, and empowers patients and providers to communicate more effectively.

These digital transformations make care delivery more accessible and approachable for all patients. Data-driven solutions that are patient-focused present an engagement roadmap to enhance the experience while preparing the patient and family for smooth transitions throughout the care journey. This shift toward patient-focused cross-continuum care creates opportunities to accelerate mobile-optimized digital care journeys that engage and activate patients before, during, and after care. Digital technology bolsters more efficient care coordination, giving patients the right care and support at the right times in the right settings. With digital transformation, indirect communication and redundancy are eliminated, response times are reduced, and the overall care journey is more efficient. 

The Future of Healthcare

All industries, including healthcare, will continue to transform and advance using digital innovations. There are significant benefits to it in healthcare including reducing the amount of data that is siloed and providing more accessible health information to increase efficiency. 

As consumerism, costs, experiences, and expectations continue to drive digital transformation, healthcare facilities should select an end-to-end partner with a secure patient engagement system that fully integrates with the existing HIT and helps healthcare teams seamlessly collaborate with patients and families across the care continuum. A trusted service provider will be equipped in delivering value to customers and patients alike in a quickly evolving ecosystem. 

Digital transformation is designed to increase staff efficiency and benefit operations while improving patient outcomes and experience. With new ways of delivering value, digital transformation will allow patients, families, and providers to become more connected and ensure better health outcomes.

About Dave Bennett 

Dave Bennett is the CEO of pCare. His visionary approach to patient engagement, digital and mobile technologies, and IT integration ensure continuous innovation of the #1-KLAS ranked pCare platform and a company culture dedicated to delighting customers. Prior to joining pCare, Dave served in a variety of executive roles at ViiMed, GetWellNetwork and StayWell. Dave holds a CISM certificate from ISACA and is an active member of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), and the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE).

What You Should Know:

– Children’s Mercy Kansas City launches its Patient Progression Hub – a hospital operations center that uses artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics and real-time information to optimize care progression and coordination from the time a patient’s admission is requested until discharged.

– The Patient Progression Hub is part of a strategic collaboration with GE Healthcare to improve access, streamline the flow of patients, enhance discharge planning, improve staffing needs, and forecast patient demand.

Patient Progression Hub Overview

The 6,000-square foot hub, inspired by NASA’s mission control center, houses a video wall with customized analytic apps, or “tiles” to monitor and manage the flow of patients. The system uses AI algorithms to identify potential issues, enabling care teams to proactively solve problems before they arise. Hub team members are co-located in the space to facilitate greater communication and collaboration, break down bottlenecks and barriers, and increase satisfaction for both patients and employees.

Other key benefits of the Patient Progression Hub include:

Managing right bed, right place, on time – Centralizing bed placement allows staff to manage bed assignment workflow, prioritize bed placement, and place external/intra-system transfers in a timely manner.

Avoiding unnecessary delays – Real-time data allows staff to address potential delays, such as reducing time patients wait in the Emergency Department or the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) for an inpatient bed to be available.

Improving staffing – AI predicts patient census levels 24 and 48 hours in advance with a high degree of accuracy. By predicting future demand, staffing needs can be filled, assuring patients are cared for by the appropriate care teams.

Streamlining discharge process – Real-time data and predictive analytics track each patient’s journey, enabling staff to prioritize tests, procedures and medicines to get the patient discharged in a timely manner and open a bed for another patient who needs it.

What You Should Know:

Today at HIMSS23, Amazon announced a new suite of Alexa Smart Properties (ASP) for Healthcare capabilities designed to improve the patient and medical staff experience at hospitals.

– With these new capabilities, healthcare and solution providers have even more ways to enable device fleet management and build Alexa capabilities at scale for patient care.

The new Alexa features include:

• Upcoming availability of WebRTC support: will help patients and medical staff conduct audio and video calls between Echo devices and non-Echo devices like tablets and laptops
• Private Branch Exchange (PBX) Support: Allows healthcare providers to link ASP-supported devices with their hospitals’ phone systems for routing Alexa calls and supporting caller ID when patients and medical staff conduct inbound and outbound calls.
• WPA2 Enterprise Wi-Fi: The upcoming ability for providers to onboard ASP-supported devices to WPA2 Enterprise Wi-Fi networks so that healthcare providers can safely and securely connect these devices to Wi-Fi more seamlessly.

Amazon also announced the upcoming availability of the Echo Show 15, an entirely new type of Echo Show that hangs naturally on the wall and features a large screen for ideal accessibility and digital signage. Its plastic and glass case materials can also be sanitized more effectively for hospital settings.

What You Should Know:

• LifeOmic, a healthcare technology company powering precision health with its end-to-end software solution, the LifeOmic Platform, today announced the launch of its Patient Mobile App. LifeOmic’s Patient Mobile App enables the two-way connection between the healthcare team and patient. 
• With the LifeOmic Patient Mobile App, healthcare providers have access to a highly configurable solution that integrates directly into their existingworkflows to meet their unique needs.

Ushering in an Environment For Personalized Care 

The growth of mobile health, which is estimated to reach $12.1 billion by 2030, is one of the most promising trends in the healthcare industry due to its capacity to support, educate and connect patients to their care teams between office visits.However, there is a tremendous gap between medical professionals and patients due to the plethora of siloed mobile health apps available within the market. LifeOmic aims to solve this problem by providing healthcare systems and providers with the ideal solution for proactively and holistically managing patient outcomes without adding a burden to the care team. 

“Healthcare providers face two challenges — engaging patients without overwhelming staff and managing multiple apps within a system,” said Dr. Don Brown, CEO and founder of LifeOmic. “LifeOmic addresses both by providing a secure, scalable solution that integrates with patients’ records and collects data from various sources. By surfacing issues that need attention, LifeOmic streamlines proactive management without increasing staff workload.” 

The LifeOmic Patient Mobile App was designed to be the hub for all connection points. The app can be configured for different audiences and use cases—so whether it is used for remote patient monitoring, patient adherence, patient education or research, the app is flexibly designed to offer two-way communication. This enables LifeOmic to empower health systems and providers to improve patient outcomes via patient monitoring and reduce readmissions and visits to the emergency department through the valuable insights gained by leveraging patient-reported data. 

With The LifeOmic Patient Mobile App, health systems and healthcare providers can: 

● Incorporate organization’s name and branding

● Easily gather patient eConsent

● Configure the app layout to integrate with other sites and apps

● Deliver multimedia content for extended learning (video, articles, audio, flashcard content)

● Create daily patient tasks

● Gather patient-reported information from surveys

● Add video conversations; either 1:1 or group sessions.

● Configure a chatbot to process and understand patient questions

● Connect to wearables (e.g., Fitbit, Apple and Google)

● Integrate with medical devices (e.g., Dexcom CGM) 

● Use alerts and dashboards to proactively monitor patients’ health

By integrating into patient clinical records such as Epic, Cerner and Cerbo and wearable device data, the LifeOmic Patient Mobile App allows for easy electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) collection to create a better patient experience while helping surface issues that need attention from staff. The app also enables patient connection between office visits, providing the necessary education and support to understand their conditions, play active roles in self-care and reduce the likelihood of complications. Provided by the healthcare system or provider, the app is completely free to the patient.

All data acquired from the app is stored in the secure LifeOmic Platform. Both the LifeOmic Platform and the app maintain the highest level of security and are HIPAA-compliant, GDPR-compliant and HITRUST certified. 

What You Should Know:

Audio-only telehealth visits for both primary care and mental health services remained common at safety net clinics in California since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

The RAND study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that in August 2022 audio-only visits still accounted for 1 in 5 primary care visits and 2 in 5 behavioral health visits among people who received care at Federally Qualified Health Centers in California.

Researchers say the higher rates of audio-only telehealth in safety net settings raises questions about the quality of care and equity for low-income patients, since the effectiveness of audio-only telehealth has not been established.

Key findings of the report include:

• The number of primary care visits increased by 8.5% from February 2020 to August 2022, while the number of total behavioral visits increased 23% during the same period. The increases are likely the result of being able to widely offer telehealth services, even as the clinics lost staff members.

• audio-only telehealth visits for primary care services peaked in April 2020, while audio-only visits for behavioral health peaked in March 2021.

• Within primary care, the decline in audio-only visits from the early pandemic peak appears to coincide with the return of in-person visits rather than growth in video visits.

• For primary care, the proportion of in-person visits increased from 30% in April 2020 to 71% by August of 2022.  Over the same period, audio-only visits decreased from 67% to 21%, while video visits increased from 4% to 7%.

• For behavioral health, the proportion of in-person visits increased from 20% in April 2020 to 37% in August 2022. During that period, audio-only visits for behavioral health care decreased from 74% to 39%, while video visits increased from 8% to 23%.  

• Federally Qualified Health Centers’ continued use of audio-only telehealth may be a result of the clinics and their patients not having access to the technology needed for video telehealth. In addition, since California’s Medicaid program (Medi-Cal) granted permanent payment parity for audio-only visits, there are no financial incentives for the clinics to limit audio-only visits.

Providing patients with a positive health outcome is always the priority for their healthcare provider. The journey to accomplishing this goal can often be an uphill challenge with many variables at play. Providers are tasked with not only delivering a positive health outcome but also with the patient experience and level of satisfaction as they make their way through their healthcare journey. Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the emergence of virtual healthcare, the healthcare industry has witnessed dramatic changes in care delivery and the patient experience.

The pandemic brought forth several issues in healthcare provisions and treatments, including staffing shortages, poor delivery of services, and disparities between the health needs of the population and the competencies of health professionals. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that these challenges have halted or reduced treatments for illnesses like cardiovascular emergencies, hypertension, diabetes, and diabetes-related complications. To correct these inefficiencies – and to ensure positive patient experiences and continued satisfaction – the healthcare industry had to embrace change and implement new strategies.

Understanding the perception of virtual health care

In a survey conducted by the Cleveland Clinic, results showed patients found virtual health care to be just as impactful as in-person visits. These positive responses from patients are essential to recognize, as the survey, in its fourth iteration by the J.D. Power group, shows that telehealth usage is up nearly 30% now compared to when the study was conducted in 2019. 

Several other studies have shown optimistic statistics related to virtual health care: Perhaps the most important to acknowledge are the ones in which nearly 98% of respondents reported being satisfied with telehealth experiences and 91% satisfied with video consultations. To take that a step further, about 88% agreed that virtual consultations were more convenient than in-person visits, and more than 85% believe telemedicine has the same reliability as in-person visits. These studies all support that trust in doctors ultimately correlated with higher patient satisfaction in remote visits.

These findings are also the key to understanding the patient experience and satisfaction when evaluating virtual care. It’s also apparent when looking at how it has impacted no-show rates. According to an NIH report, the rate of missed in-office appointments is more than 35%, significantly higher than the 7.5% rate of telehealth no-show rates. Convenience seems to have a heavy impact on patients here. And when there is a reduction in missed appointments, it creates better efficiency for providers.

In a 2022 McKinsey and Company survey, respondents reported that telehealth appointments were more convenient and were much more satisfied with their care than in-person care. They also showed interest in broader digital healthcare solutions. The same survey, conducted in 2022, showed that nearly 80% of doctors already offer telehealth and in-person visits. 

Enhancing the patient experience through virtual options

Virtual care options can enhance the patient experience and satisfaction through many different avenues of care. Patients and consumers are similar in a few ways. Both expect products and services to be easy to access and obtain through any device – in a timely and convenient way. When providers can offer patients around-the-clock access to virtual care through a best-in-class platform developed with them in mind, patients are placed on the road to positive health outcomes with benefits that heighten their healthcare experience and journey.

In the 21^st century, with how connected we are, people often take to the internet as soon as they do not feel well to try to understand what their symptoms could mean. Still, while they might get hundreds of immediate “answers,” that doesn’t mean they are receiving the correct ones. Patients should instead have access to a trusted provider who can give them 24/7 consistency with the most accurate and personalized attention. Digital health solutions do this in a way that provides patients with relevant, digestible, reliable information. This gives them the confidence to access their care when they need it long-term, which will bolster their engagement. These kinds of results and level of attention to care will not come with random internet searches. 

Patient data can be accessed across both realms with frictionless movement between the physical and digital worlds within a digital platform. This gives providers instant access to essential patient data, improving their accessibility to review medical history, identify patterns and make informed recommendations. This ensures providers deliver top-notch quality care by more accurately diagnosing illnesses and lessening patient risk levels. With access to all this data and insights, structural complexities are removed, workflows are simplified, and the entire experience is streamlined. The result? The improved overall health and well-being of any patient.

All-encompassing solutions for the long-term

Utilizing digital health platforms to streamline information and processes for providers eliminates mundane administrative tasks that otherwise take hours of interpreting manual data. It frees up providers to dedicate more time to their patients. Virtual healthcare platforms can also reduce patient and provider costs, provide positive health outcomes and ensure higher patient satisfaction. 

There’s no doubt: Virtual care is a means to provide patients with affordability, convenience, and 24/7 access to medical professionals. Enabling this access to patients doesn’t just enhance each encounter; it allows them to have a more significant role in their healthcare journey. Virtual care optimizes the patient experience and satisfaction, which will bolster increased satisfaction now and in the long term.

About Keith Algozzine

Keith Algozzine is the co-founder and CEO of UCM Digital Health. A board-certified Physician Assistant, he was formerly the Chief PA of Emergency Medicine for St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy, NY, where he witnessed firsthand the challenges of the modern healthcare system. Keith was also part of the national ER startup management team for Pegasus Emergency Medicine. He represents UCM Digital Health on the American Telemedicine Association Accreditation Advisory Board and serves as an advisor to the Clinical Practice Guidelines Committees dealing with telemedicine considerations for urgent and emergency care.

Despite holding the promise of delivering superior patient outcomes while lowering healthcare costs, many providers remain reluctant to embrace value-based care (VBC) reimbursement models. Progress toward VBC adoption hasn’t achieved its potential yet, hovering around 60% of all payment models from 2018 to 2021, with the remaining 40% comprised of traditional fee for service (FFS).

Though some providers simply are hesitant to abandon the FFS model that has served them well, others are leery of the technological and management challenges they associate with VBC models. According to consulting firm RTI Health Advance, these include:

• Administrative complexity within the value-based payment ecosystem
• Transitioning upside risk-only to fully accountable care; many providers are challenged to operationalize programs and afford the necessary time and finances
• Value-based models must incorporate and address specialty care as part of the continuum of covered services
• Health equity plans now are required as part of new value-based contracts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) 

The CMS Innovation Center set a goal for all Original Medicare beneficiaries and most Medicaid beneficiaries to be in VBC relationships by 2030. These risk-based care models are designed to encourage proactive care, better population health and reduced spending across the healthcare spectrum. To meet that deadline, provider organizations will need technology tools for administering relationships within a value-based network. 

How Value-based Administration works

VBC networks are comprised of multiple stakeholders that may include hospitals, health systems, private practices, payers, accountable care organizations (ACOs), clinically integrated networks, social service networks and community-based organizations (CBOs). Successful implementation of value-based programs, therefore, requires complex hierarchy support for onboarding, data capture, data digitization, payments, and data exchange. These technologies must support social determinants of health (SDoH) and facilitate value-based payments, quality reporting and other use cases. 

Within VBC networks are many-to-many relationships in which an entity in one network may be engaged in several networks under various contractual engagements with other entities. Such a “network of networks” can work only with an infrastructure that supports the hierarchies between these entities. The architectural framework and processes used to run VBC networks collectively are referred to as value-based administration (VBA).

Figure 1 shows how VBA helps stakeholders across the healthcare continuum – providers, payers, patients, and CBOs – eliminate barriers to participating in a VBC network while also delivering measurable clinical and operational benefits.

Inadequate digital infrastructures

Most healthcare organizations, however, lack the digital infrastructure necessary for VBA. “We can’t graft a new digital, platform-based healthcare system onto healthcare infrastructure designed to support traditional operations and care models,” Mayo Clinic President and CEO Gianrico Farrugia writes in an article for the World Economic Forum. “Healthcare needs transformation. And to truly transform healthcare, we must simultaneously build physical and digital frameworks to meet the evolving needs of patients worldwide.”

Fortunately, healthcare organizations can implement VBA without embarking on a costly rip-and-replace strategy. This can be done through a platform infrastructure that can be deployed as a DaaS (Data-as-a-Service) or as PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) or the traditional SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model.  Such an infrastructure allows partner firms and/or clients to use existing applications served up via microservices or extend/create microservices and business applications for their own needs.  

What’s needed to enable VBA 

To fully leverage relationships in a VBC network, providers must: 

1. Implement a robust cloud-based data infrastructure to allow real-time clinical decision-making, information sharing and analytics
2. Realign downstream reimbursement to include both medical and non-medical providers (behavioral health services, drug treatment centers, etc.)
3. Incorporate SDoH resources and partners, such as CBOs
4. Have a dashboard view into real-time performance against all contracts 

An integral part of effective VBA infrastructure is ML (Machine Learning) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.  A key to implementing digital transformation is data digitization and amalgamation of that data with structured and external data sets so that a 360-degree view of the patient can be achieved to provide actionable insights to Payers, Providers and Patients.  AI technologies, coupled with ML algorithms in a robust data engineering framework that enables to-and-from integration between systems with this digitized data, are needed to make this a reality.  These facilitate better automation of tasks and decision-making processes since data-driven insights require digitized data in order to automate processes. A set of secure and scalable cloud-based microservices – on which different applications and integrations are built – then helps facilitate data interoperability as well as opportunities to build/partner/deploy different workflow-based applications for the end users. 

Final thoughts

Though structural and technological barriers impeding VBC adoption persist, many large healthcare organizations are working with technology partners to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. Implementing VBA to manage VBC initiatives will empower healthcare organizations to deliver on the full promise of patient-centered, value-based healthcare.

About Rahul Sharma

Rahul Sharma is the CEO of HSBlox, which enables SDOH risk-stratification, care coordination and permissioned data sharing through its digital health platform.

About Lynn Carroll

Lynn Carroll is the chief operating officer of HSBlox, which assists healthcare stakeholders at the intersection of value-based care and precision health with a secure, information-rich approach to event-based, patient-centric digital healthcare processes – empowering whole health in traditional care settings, the home and in the community.  

What once seemed like science fiction, interacting with people across the world has become the new normal. While we have become increasingly accustomed to video calls and instant communication in recent years, forays into virtual worlds and extended realities are still relatively novel. 

In a post-Covid world, it seems strange to think that video conferences and calls were not the norm only three years ago. But the value created by virtual interactions during the last several years has driven a worldwide adoption of virtual technology that is here to stay. 

As we move beyond video screens into virtual worlds and extended reality, many are asking if the metaverse has the potential to provide real value in the coming years, or if it is simply another shiny technology that will fade. There is no doubt that engaging in virtual worlds is a level above simple video interactions, but if these enhanced interactions cannot translate to value for both businesses and customers, adoption may lag. 

While the pharmaceutical industry and life sciences are often criticized for slow technological adoption, the metaverse presents an enormous opportunity for early adoption built on a clear understanding of value. 

Virtual worlds and extended reality have the potential to be serious channels that enhance normal day-to-day business, and 82% of executives anticipate that in the next three years, metaverse will be integrated into their business¹. Working to successfully activate the metaverse as an extension of business is an essential part of understanding how this new technology will be fundamental to optimizing business outcomes in the future. Adopting and activating metaverse technology, however, requires that we create an actionable metaverse roadmap where virtual worlds are actively tied to business outcomes, domain expertise, and regulatory knowledge. Each of these must guide the business use cases. Faster speeds to market are also enabled when agile ways of working are deployed and technology best practices are leveraged. 

Understanding the value of specific metaverse use cases in the life sciences can help highlight how developing platforms and implementing virtual worlds have the potential to drive digital transformation in new and effective ways. 

Using virtual worlds for sales rep training

Developing a quality rep training program is foundational for activating a dynamic, effective field force. The Gartner Group has found that retention and learning outcomes improve by 75% when an educational program uses experiential learning². While current rep training is rooted in helping reps learn how to effectively interact with healthcare professionals (HCPs), there are limitations in deploying the traditional training model. By utilizing virtual worlds and extended reality, rep training can be transformed into a highly immersive experience, where reps can model and practice their interactions with HCPs in a number of realistic scenarios. Just like pilots train with simulators so that they can learn how to better anticipate what it will be like to fly in a real plane, providing high-quality simulations for rep training can lead to more rep success in the field and increased revenue. 

Creating immersive patient education experiences

With healthcare costs rising, the need for greater patient education has increased. Patients who have a better understanding about their disease are more likely to better manage their own care and avoid hospitalizations. Patient education is also linked to helping patients feel empowered and more able to cope with the demands of managing their disease. This can reduce mental health concerns and improve patient satisfaction³. 

While patient education can happen in the doctor’s office, the hospital, at home, or through reading materials and videos, these options for education are limited in their ability to engage patients in their education. Virtual worlds open the opportunity for patients to actively participate in their education in an immersive and highly engaging environment. Allowing patients to create digital twins, practice skills, repeat lessons, or join patient communities that offer support all contribute to quality patient education experiences. 

Building interactive engagement capability for HCPs

Metaverse offers a range of opportunities for physicians to access information, training, and professional development opportunities in a virtual environment. One simple use case is the possibility to host virtual conferences and events, which can be attended by physicians from around the world. The real benefit of virtual, however, is when a platform can offer a more immersive experience where HCPs can experience virtual simulations of medical procedures and scenarios. One example of this immersive potential is the traditional mechanism of action (MOA) video. Thanks to metaverse, these topics can be presented in engaging 3D formats. Using metaverse technology, traditional patient battle cards can have an interactive replica, and eDetailing by sales rep has the potential to be done in a virtual world with virtual sales reps or by using a chat bot powered by conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. 

Moving into the future with metaverse

Regulated content has not yet been put on a metaverse platform, and virtual worlds have a long way to go to become more realistic. But embracing metaverse now as a viable channel for business will allow us to optimize its development and experiment with ways to steward the technology so that it can most effectively drive change in the life sciences industry for business, HCPs, and patients.

About Pratik Maroo

At Indegene, a digital-first, life sciences commercialization company, Pratik leads technology product strategy and IP portfolio development. He has 25 years of tech experience, including 16 years in the life sciences industry. Previously, he was the Chief Digital Officer at Cognizant Life Sciences. In the past, he has worked with Sapient (now part of Publicis) and CSC (now DXC). 

About Brooke Anderson

Brooke creates narratives that help life sciences companies engage with consumers, drive optimized go-to-market strategies, and leverage the power of digital transformation. At Indegene, a digital-first, life sciences commercialization company, Brooke leads marketing and demand generation efforts for both Omnichannel Activation and Emerging Biotech. She has over 10 years of marketing experience across industries including consumer products, financial services, technology, and life sciences.

What You Should Know:

– UR Medicine, the clinical enterprise of the University of Rochester Medical Center, has selected DexCare’s technology to power its Get Care Now Program and provide more patients with on-demand video visits.

– By choosing DexCare to offer On-Demand Video Visits, UR Medicine patients now have access to immediate, high-quality care from the comfort of their own homes. UR Medicine now serves patients across 24 counties in New York – beyond those where the health system has physical locations – which is particularly important for bringing care to and helping improve health outcomes for underserved rural populations, who often face barriers in accessing quality care.

Benefits of On-Demand Video Visits

On-Demand Video Visits enable patients to virtually connect with UR Medicine providers in real-time to diagnose and develop treatment plans for common conditions including colds, infections, rashes, and more. This new offering improves the convenience of care for patients with minor illnesses and common conditions who are unable to visit their primary care physician’s office. Patients so far have experienced low wait times for On-Demand Video Visits, with a median of around 9 minutes before connecting with a provider. Early users have been highly satisfied with their care experiences, and UR Medicine has seen a net promoter score of 92 – far above the average NPS for healthcare providers of 38. DexCare’s technology also optimizes health system resources by ensuring that in-person care capacity is prioritized for those who need it most. 

“Patients now expect to access and receive care on their terms, and on-demand virtual offerings are a foundational element to providing a holistic consumer-centric care experience,” said Derek Streat, CEO of DexCare. “We’re proud to partner with UR Medicine and significantly enhance the patient experience by enabling easy access to modern and personalized avenues of care.” 

What You Should Know:

– Cosmos Health Inc., a global healthcare group with proprietary lines of nutraceuticals and distributor of pharmaceuticals, branded generics, OTC medications and medical devices, announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ZipDoctor Inc. from American International Holdings Corp (AMIH) for an undisclosed sum.

– ZipDoctor Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of American International Holdings Corp. (AMIH), is a direct-to-consumer subscription-based telemedicine platform, that expects to provide its customers affordable, unlimited, 24/7 access to board certified physicians and licensed mental and behavioral health counsellors and therapists.

– ZipDoctor’s online telemedicine platform will be available to customers across the United States and shall offer English and Spanish coverage with virtual visits taking place either via the phone or through a secured video chat platform. ZipDoctor customers will be able to subscribe through their website at www.ZipDoctor.co and will be only required to pay a monthly fee, which is determined based on whether they are an individual, a couple, or a family.

What You Should Know:

– MedArrive today announced its collaboration with Ouma, one of the most mission-driven maternal health companies in the nation, which has the largest DTC network of maternal-fetal medicine providers (and other care specialists).

– The collaboration aims to improve the health of pregnant women and their newborns, especially those at high risk, by adding a vital service to MedArrive’s growing ecosystem of specialty care providers that managed Medicaid health plans can leverage for members in their homes. 

– The two companies have aligned on value-based arrangements with shared cost savings. By reducing complications, they can reduce unnecessary readmissions and lower overall spend on pregnancies.

MedArrive Solution

The MedArrive care management solution is a white-labeled program that connects pre-identified health plan members with MedArrive’s field provider network of highly trained and skilled paramedics, EMTs and other healthcare professionals. These field providers visit the homes of enrolled members on behalf of their plan, providing a mix of in-home healthcare services, diagnostics, health assessments and other preventive health measures – while also addressing social care needs like transportation, mobility or nutrition assistance.  

How MedArrive Works with Ouma

A MedArrive field provider goes into a patient’s home and when it is known in advance that the patient is pregnant, they set up an appointment with an Ouma provider (as close to on-demand as possible) so that the patient can either talk to someone from Ouma while the MedArrive field provider is there or the field provider can explain to the patient how to access Ouma after the visit.

Ouma’s team includes: Maternal Fetal Medicine Physicians, Certified Nurse Midwives, Behavioral Health Specialists, Perinatal Nurse Navigators, and Lactation Consultants. All the specialists needed to deliver total care to families before, during, and after pregnancy.

Availability

Available nationwide to its health plan partners, Ouma’s service utilizes simple SMS messaging for patient to reach them in between appointments, and a single link for video visits that opens on any device/browser, works with as little bandwidth as 3G signal (no broadband required), and has integrated live interpreters (if needed) on the same video feed as the clinical team.

– TytoCare, a virtual care company enabling accessible, high-quality primary care from home, today announced that it received FDA clearance for its Tyto Insights for Wheeze Detection, paving the way for its rollout in the US.

– The wheeze detection algorithm expands the company’s existing AI-powered Tyto Insights™ smart diagnostic capabilities, filling the quality gaps currently experienced with traditional telehealth and alleviating challenges imposed by the ongoing shortage of healthcare professionals.

AI-Driven Upgrades to TytoCare’s Home Smart Clinic Solutions to Expand Acute Care and Chronic Condition Management

Tyto InsightsTM for Wheeze Detection is designed to aid in the clinical assessment of lung sound data for adults and children aged two and above, enabling clinicians to accurately diagnose respiratory conditions remotely. Fueled by TytoCare’s own database of lung sounds – the largest of its kind – the AI-powered decision support software automatically analyzes lung sounds recorded by TytoCare’s FDA-cleared handheld remote exam device’s stethoscope to determine whether wheezing is detected. Whenever a remote lung exam is carried out with TytoCare, Tyto Insights for Wheeze Detection prompts a clinician if a specific abnormal lung sound suggestive of wheezing is suspected. 

The FDA clearance comes as TytoCare is continually strengthening its offerings to provide the best possible virtual primary care from home with its Home Smart Clinic. By expanding its clinical decision support, Tyto Insights for Wheeze Detection bolsters the Home Smart Clinic’s support of acute care and long-term care for chronic conditions, many of which are respiratory in nature, and helps to alleviate challenges posed by the ongoing healthcare professional shortage. To date, TytoCare has found that respiratory diagnoses constitute over 40% of all diagnoses made using its virtual care solution, reflecting both the common nature of respiratory illnesses and conditions including asthma across patient populations, as well as TytoCare’s unique ability to provide optimal virtual care for the large numbers of patients with respiratory symptoms by offering remote auscultation.

“Our Tyto Insight capabilities, including our wheeze detection algorithm, furthers our goal of enhancing the virtual care experience for all patients, clinicians, providers, and health plans – not just by increasing the quality of care and expanding our chronic care management capabilities, but also by further assisting clinicians and specialists to make informed and accurate diagnoses remotely,” said Dedi Gilad, CEO and Co-Founder of TytoCare. “At TytoCare, we have the world’s largest database of lung and heart sounds, as well as related symtoms and vital signs, and we will continue to leverage it to provide superb quality of care for families worldwide.”

TytoCare’s Home Smart Clinic was introduced to solve the Home Healthcare Delivery Gap™ that patients experience with traditional audio/video-only telehealth solutions. The solution combines TytoCare’s FDA-cleared handheld remote examination device, the AI-backed Tyto Insights™ smart diagnosis support, including the Wheeze Detection, and the Tyto Engagement Labs™ configured for each specific program and cohort to provide high-quality, accessible virtual care in the home and enable health plans and providers to deliver on expected ROI and drive improved health outcomes. The Tyto Insights for Wheeze Detection already bears the CE Mark for usage by clinicians in Europe.

Although the healthcare industry has shown significant resilience, the byproduct of the pandemic has amplified staff stressors across all operational and clinical roles. In a study conducted in 2022, more than one-third (34%) of the participating registered nurses (RN) stated that it was likely they would leave bedside nursing by the end of the year. Almost half (44%) cited both burnout and high-stress environments as their main reasons to retire or pursue other careers. 

As staff shortages increase, so do workloads. Forty-three percent of the nurses that responded to Hospital IQ’s recent survey echoed that sentiment. Due to technician shortages, many nurses must now complete even more tasks that fall outside of their respective roles, which reduces the time spent on patient care and increases the overall stress carried on the shoulders of these critical caregivers. Forty-five percent of respondents stated that the patient-to-nurse staffing ratios they’re experiencing are currently 5:1, which is more than double the optimal target of 2:1 and contributes to reduced quality of care and even patient safety risks. Administrative burdens and manual tasks are additional drivers of nurse burnout and frustration. Many of those interviewed expressed that most of the workflows and processes involved in their day-to-day are manual – due to a lack of technology solutions, systems, and automation.

Providing the necessary support is key to achieving high-quality patient care, staff satisfaction, and overall retention, along with increasing an organization’s bottom line. In 2023, hospital and health IT leaders should examine new approaches to provide support and truly take meaningful steps to address the challenges facing healthcare professionals. Real-time location systems (RTLS) have been proven to offer cost-effective solutions that ease operational burdens and enhance safety for both the patients and the staff. The IoT technology behind RTLS features active-radio frequency identification (RFID) badges and tags to reliably and securely offer immediate visibility into the precise location of equipment, colleagues, or patients while increasing workflow efficiencies at a time when healthcare professionals need all hands on deck and to work at the “top of their license.”

Provide A Better Experience for the Patient and Staff

Many healthcare systems are pursuing enhanced technology to bring new value to patients and ensure greater support for staff. To enhance both experiences further in 2023, healthcare organizations should leverage real-time location technologies to provide stronger communication between patients, loved ones, and staff. By utilizing RTLS alongside robust patient workflow software, automated family text messaging shares updates with patient-approved contacts in real-time as patients move throughout the phases of care. RTLS implementations have an immediate impact by automating proactive patient communications, and sharing status details, wait times, and directions. These communication options enable healthcare facilities to provide peace of mind and ensure that both patients and loved ones are well-informed. This all happens in an automated fashion with the single goal of removing the administrative burden from the frontline staff. 

Due to continued pandemic restrictions and protocols, the necessary hospital infection control rules have increasingly led to family separation when loved ones are admitted. Reduced contact can increase the stress experienced by patients and negatively impact their recovery process. This separation often creates knowledge barriers within families and leaves them in the dark when trying to fully understand the complex medical needs of their loved ones. Family text messaging can return some comfort as visitation restrictions remain ever-changing. These automated messages allow staff to focus on patient care, while still providing important and timely updates for loved ones. Organizations that have implemented this have seen an increase in trust among the patient, the medical staff providing care, and family members.

Digital wayfinding can also reduce stress and anxiety for patients and visitors as healthcare systems seek cost-effective ways to provide a better experience in 2023. On a first visit to a new facility, it is estimated that approximately 30% of patients get lost attempting to navigate a complex and unknown facility. Navigational challenges can lead to late arrivals, missed appointments, and ultimately delayed patient care. In addition to impacting the patient’s care, hospitals nationwide collectively lose ~$150 billion each year from missed appointments. 

An advanced digital wayfinding solution integrated with the larger RTLS deployment can prepare a customized route for a patient and send the link via text message. Upon arrival, the user simply opens the route in a mobile web browser, eliminating the need for a specific application, and receives turn-by-turn directions from their parking spot to the location of their appointment. The directions are provided on a private Google Maps-like interface, giving users a sense of familiarity and peace of mind. The future is exciting as the industry will see automated check-ins once a patient enters the parking garage or send notification to a pharmacy to begin mixing medications proactively for oncology patients that are in route to the infusion clinic. 

Staff Safety Is Crucial 

As tensions continue to grow within healthcare facilities, 48% of U.S. RNs reported an increase in workplace violence throughout 2022. Ask any nurse you know, and they will share horrific stories about this issue at organizations across the country every day of the year. Tens of thousands of caregivers and operational staff utilize mobile duress solutions to prevent violent threats from escalating to dangerous events. Granting easy access to subtly signal for help, duress alert buttons are located on IoT-enabled staff badges. With just the push of a button, employees gain better protection and enterprise-wide support.

Once clicked, the badge immediately sends a silent alert with the precise, real-time location of the staff member to the security team and the appropriate computer workstation, monitor, and dispatcher, as well as by email, text, and/or VoIP phone message. The first responders can see the person’s movement and respond to the most recent location, as it updates every few seconds. For enhanced location capabilities and a safer working environment, leadership should consider RTLS duress solutions that offer clinical-grade locating (CGL) which ensure room and even sub-room level accuracy.

For ease of implementation, staff duress solutions can integrate with various traditional security systems, video management systems, access control, and mass notification systems. The staff duress functionality can be a simple add-on for healthcare facilities that already leverage an automated nurse call system and desire a safer work environment in 2023. By providing the ability for staff to request assistance to their exact location should they need it, the message is reinforced that they work in a safe environment where they are valued.

Automate Workflow to Discover the Best Staffing Options 

It isn’t a secret that improving operational performance at hospitals helps to improve staff productivity, morale, care quality, and patient outcomes. Fifty-three percent of nurses in the Hospital IQ survey desired streamlined processes that ensure visibility into patient needs and overall communication. The best place to start is with the manual administrative processes bogging down already overwhelmed nurses.

Lessening nurses’ workloads is a critical aspect of combating burnout and promoting staff retention, and healthcare leaders will find that investing in healthcare professionals makes sense for the facility’s bottom line. To jointly provide the best patient care and workplace environment, staff need access to platforms that automate workflow to alleviate manual documentation, which can often be delayed or potentially inaccurate, and offer proactive communications to each other, patients, and family members. Workflow platforms that leverage RTLS data can keep tabs on key patient flow metrics and ensure staff know where all patients are in their care journey. 

Effective enterprise-wide care coordination can be greatly hindered by manual workflow systems. These manual systems waste time that could otherwise be reallocated back to patient care. Healthcare decision-makers can eliminate non-value-added tasks by providing access to an advanced workflow platform with staff display boards showing real-time facility visibility. Through this automated system, teams are on the same page with up-to-the-minute insight to continuously measure interactions, reduce bottlenecks, and consider best staffing choices. Real-time communications and enterprise visibility keep operations running smoothly with high productivity and satisfaction.

Discover the Right RTLS for a Strong ROI 

As healthcare providers are constantly considering new approaches to support staff, selecting an RTLS partner with a comprehensive suite of solutions makes it easier to expand into other use cases and departments in the future. Decision-makers should look to truly partner with a vendor who will explore the organization’s pain points and deliver a 3-to-5-year implementation plan with associated ROI projections and necessary operational resourcing. 

Invest in a partner who has nurses, former hospital administrators, epidemiologists, and clinic managers as part of their implementation and consulting offerings. These individuals have worked in the field and understand the pain points from top to bottom. ROI and overall utilization of the IoT investment is more important than ever and working with an RTLS expert who can not only provide upfront proposed value specific to your organization but follow up with executing and documenting results is what matters most. Through practical guidance, healthcare facilities can maximize real-time technologies and drive meaningful change throughout their enterprise in the new year.

About Scott Hondros

Scott Hondros is the Vice President of Professional Services at CenTrak, which offers locating, sensing, and security solutions for the healthcare industry. CenTrak has helped more than 2,000 healthcare organizations around the world build safer, more efficient enterprises. For more information: visit www.centrak.com