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EXCLUSIVE POST - Dr. Aneesh Chopra was a keynote speaker at the recent MATRC Summit meeting and spoke of the financial crisis in healthcare and the need for a more value-driven healthcare system:

  • Our government is broke                                                                                             Image
  • HealthCare is a huge cost driver
  • Employers have had enough and don't want to pay for employee healthcare any more
  • Individuals can no longer afford the higher and higher health insurance premiums
  • Commercial payers need to align
  • Doctors need to look at alternatives as they have less and less time and more and more patients.
  • The Accountable Care Organization is geared towards a value-based, quality-driven model

Dr. Chopra expressed the need for increased access to care while increasing quality of care and decreasing costs and believes that mHealth can help achieve this.  Examples follow:

Blue Button -   A layer of authentication security on top of the internet allows patients in VA hospitals across the US to access and download their health information and share it with their providers.  This facilitates transfer of EHRs allowing for a higher quality of patient care.

Cleveland Study - A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing diabetic care in a paper environment to care in an EHR environment showed:

"Across all insurance types, EHR sites were associated with significantly higher achievement of care and outcome standards and greater improvement in diabetes care. Results confined to safety-net practices were similar."

Asthmapolis - A website that tracks asthma patients' use of their asthma inhalers, thus alerting other asthmatics of problem areas.  This results in the avoidance of traveling in these problem areas, fewer asthma attacks and fewer ED visits.

CareClix - Changing the Way You See Your Doctor-Here is their statement on their homepage:

 

"CareClix is a comprehensive telemedicine solution. The portal provides a fully integrated telehealth solution to connect medical providers and patients worldwide. The system and interaction is HIPAA compliant and is completely confidential, enabling healthcare providers and patients to securely communicate and manage common day medical conditions.

This virtual medical visit seeks to lower the cost of health care, reduce transportation expense, improve access to physicians and specialists, eliminate the need for duplicate lab work and testing, improve the quality of care using advanced technology and knowledgeable well-trained providers, and enhance real-time communication with a medical provider."

 

There are many, many more examples than just these few to tell us that mHealth and Telehealth are growing explosively, fueled by a broken healthcare system and unsustainable costs.  In the following interview Dr. Chopra names 3 main drivers in the explosion of mHealth:

  • Release of data by the US government
  • Creation of Electronic Health Records
  • Shift in HC payment to a value-based model

Listen to the interview and be encouraged.  There is hope for a new future in HealthCare.