Scenarios for Health Care Reform (Part 1 of 2)

All reformers in health care know what the field needs to do; I laid out four years ago the consensus about patient-supplied data, widespread analytics, mHealth, and transparency. Our frustration comes in when trying to crack the current hide-bound system open and create change. Recent interventions by US Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, whatever their effects on costs and insurance coverage, offer no promise to affect workflows or treatment. So this article suggests three potential scenarios where reform could succeed, along with a vision of what will happen if none of them take hold. Patients Forge Their Own Way Forward In the first scenario, a tiny group of selfer-trackers, athletes, and empowered patients start a movement that ultimately wins over hundreds of millions of individuals. These scattered enthusiasts, driven to overcome debilitating health problems or achieve extraordinary athletic feats, start to pursue self-tracking with fanaticism. Consumer or medical-grade devices provide them with ongoing data about their progress, and an open source platform such as HIE of One gives them a personal health record (PHR). They also take charge of their interactions with the health care system. They find that most primary care providers aren’t interested in the data and concerns they bring, or don’t have time to process those data and concerns in the depth they need, or don’t know how to. Therefore, while preserving standard relationships with ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Clinical Decision Support Healthcare Analytics Healthcare Business Hospitals mHealth Patients Personal Musings PHR Precision Medicine Data Analytics Health Care Costs Health Care Reform Patient-Generated Data Source Type: blogs