Healthcare's lack of homecare tech leaves it vulnerable, says Administrative Services Director Arnese Stern

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In this special Speaker Series, Becker's Healthcare caught up with Arnese Stern, administrative services director at a large, multi-state healthcare organization. 

Ms. Stern will speak during the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference on "America's Healthcare: No Cookie-Cutter Solutions" at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 19. Learn more about the event and register to attend in Chicago.

Question: Can you share your best advice for motivating your teams?

Arnese Stern: Because my employer has several potent political forces — unions — it is critical to engage and motivate the union to ensure contractual alignment and support. The union can make or break the perception, compliance and motivation of teams. It is also helpful to have mutual respect. This healthy relationship allows the unions and leadership to work collaboratively to develop structured best practice rollouts [and] cutting-edge innovations, [as well as establish] motivators connected to milestone achievements.

Q: In the past 12 months, how have you adapted to new patient experience expectations in the age of consumerism?

AS: The website, Healthcareconsumer.info, was founded in 2017 to inform, engage and empower America's healthcare consumers. This platform provides informational topics on healthcare reform, patient advisory boards and patient experience best practices, to name a few. Physicians and medical experts respond to questions that the nation's consumers ask. And, the patients and consumers provide testaments of how they were empowered to apply those [teachings] and impact their healthcare experience and/or their efforts at reforming America's healthcare.

Q: What do you see as the most vulnerable part of a hospitals business?

AS: In my opinion, the most vulnerable part of hospitals business is the lack of homecare proactive technological innovations. For example, a sudden death vulnerability database to assess residential patient need for medical alarm or alert systems that are diagnosis specific [would be valuable]. Or, an advanced system with the ability to detect more than if the patient has fallen at home, or one designed to detect substantial health changes for the elderly, diabetic, seizure, and shunt dialysis patients that live alone and may be unable to get to the phone to dial 911 quickly [would also be useful]. This homecare safety device needs to detect status changes and notify identified clinicians. The need for this detector should be assessed at office visits and at hospital discharge similar to how abuse and suicide prevention patients are evaluated. These patients have a tremendous impact on death rates post admission and death within 30 days of discharge.

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