3 thoughts on digital health & patient activation

Digital technology has the potential to upend the healthcare delivery system as we know it — but will the industry be able to unlock this potential in a way that is meaningful for the new generation of healthcare consumers?

At the Becker's Hospital Review 7th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable Nov. 13 in Chicago, a panel of experts discussed the opportunities and challenges digital health affords health systems looking to engage and activate its patients. The panel included:

• John Jenkins, MD, senior vice president and chief clinical officer for Greensboro, N.C.-based Cone Health's Connected Care and medical director at Wellsmith
• Jeff Jones, CFO of Greensboro, N.C.-based Cone Health
• Jeanne Teshler, CEO of Wellsmith

Here are some key thoughts from the panel:

Dr. Jenkins on the difference between patient engagement and patient activation:

"There is that old parable, you can serve a delicious fish dinner or you can teach someone how to fish. Sometimes we focus on consumer's experiences, and we are delivering great dinners, but they don't know how to manage their health and wellbeing. And we have to in healthcare understand that experiences are not the be all and end all. We have to take patients to the next step. There was some work done in 2006 at the University of Oregon around the concept of activation. What this was, it looked at a scale of people who were afraid to manage their own health all the way up to people who were actively searching for solutions. And what it found was that there were interventions that could be implemented to get patients to the upper end of that scale. This goes beyond experience to actually the concept of patient activation. And this is our goal in the digital health platforms, to understand how you can start to coach, interact with, provide education and information and actually create habits that result in the patient being activated in their health."

Mr. Jones on what activated patients mean for a health system:

"I think the literature is really strong. The activated patient is going to be the most efficient and least expensive to care for, and your most engaged and therefore [most] satisfied patient. The hardest part is how to activate our patients. How do we move down the risk curve and not wait until [a patient] is so sick that there is not much we can do about them, other than find the right setting to continue their journey; as opposed to where we [at Cone Health] are now, which is more in the middle of the risk pyramid. We are focused on [activating patients in] the middle of the pyramid, not the wellness aspect which is sort of the bottom of the [risk] pyramid, but [we are focusing digital patient activation efforts on] the ones who are just diagnosed, leaving the office with instructions."

Ms. Teshler on using technology to redesign care from a consumer standpoint:

"We all have to interact with the healthcare system at some point, but what does it look like from the consumer's perspective? So, from a consumer perspective, if you look at everything else that has happened, from the advent of digital technology, the ubiquitous mobility and instant connectivity is that what consumers want is instant access. But that's a problem for healthcare because it's not designed for instant access. It requires a person to go to a place to receive care and then leave that care. And that last [care] handoff is actually back to the consumer to manage his or her own care. We've designed that handoff from the consumer's perspective. We are leveraging what we see in all different kinds of technologies to help them make better decisions everyday and to do so in such a way that it doesn't intrude on their life."

Editor's note: The quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

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