The other week, my mom called to tell me that my stepdad had suffered a heart attack.
My stepdad had just celebrated his 80th birthday the previous evening with family and friends, marking the occasion by enjoying a theatrical dinner experience at a local Japanese hibachi grill.
The next morning my stepdad began experiencing chest pain and other symptoms and immediately went to the nearest emergency department. Doctors determined he had suffered a heart attack and admitted him to the hospital. A few days later, he underwent a coronary artery bypass graft and is now recovering from the procedure. Unfortunately, my stepdad suffered some post-operative complications, including a stroke, and remains in critical care.
Being more than 2,000 miles away in Northern California, I felt helpless to provide any support to my mom and stepdad during his health crisis. My mom assured me that he was in great hands. She said the hospital had an outstanding reputation in the community, which also happens to be where I grew up.
A Closer Look at the Numbers
As a digital health company, we have access to detailed quality information on every hospital across the country – information not available to the average consumer. Needless to say, I immediately checked out the hospital’s quality data.
At a high level, my mom was right. The hospital does generally have a strong reputation for cardiac care quality, with a mortality rate in the 96th percentile and a readmission rate in the 99th percentile for CABG patients nationwide. However, the hospital also has its shortcomings.
Only 50 percent of patients “strongly agreed” that they understood what to do at home following discharge, placing the hospital in the 53rd percentile. Only half of patients know what to do at home to ensure an optimal recovery. That is an abysmal statistic.
In an emergency situation like my stepdad’s, people often don’t have a choice about the hospital where they wind up receiving care. They don’t have the time to research their options to find which hospitals have the best outcomes. Even if they did, insurance coverage often dictates which hospital patients can use.
But patients are entitled to a better understanding of what to expect before and after surgery and what steps to take for an optimal recovery. They’re also entitled to engage regularly with their care providers to get the information they need when they need it.
Daily Engagement is the Right Thing to Do
Ironically, about a year ago, my company approached the hospital where my stepdad just had heart surgery. We had discussed enabling a couple of service lines with our automated digital patient engagement solution. Several administrators were impressed with the platform’s track record at reducing complications and readmissions and elevating patient experience for our clients. They felt that implementing HealthLoop would be the right thing to do for their patients. However, the deal ground to a halt when a C-suite executive said he didn’t want to make an investment in anything that didn’t drive new revenue. Sadly, quality improvement doesn’t have an ROI in healthcare.
Fast forward a year later. My stepdad’s surgery and hospital stay likely will cost his insurance company tens of thousands of dollars. I think about the impact we could have had over the past year on thousands of patients at that hospital. Really, the program costs would have been subsidized by the income the hospital receives from just one or two patients.
It’s easy to get lost in a world of spreadsheets and financials, but tight budgets and resource constraints are not excuses to deny patients the information they need to properly manage their health. While it is difficult to place an ROI on improved quality, we cannot lose sight of the fact that some basic investments can help elevate care for patients.
Patients who are better informed about what to do and expect have fewer hospital readmissions and fewer uses of emergency department and clinic visits in the post-acute care phase. HealthLoop and other patient engagement companies are helping to do this every day.
I believe that all patients deserve this level of care and I’m disappointed that my stepdad isn’t getting it. After he’s discharged from the hospital, he can’t just call the doctor every time a question comes to mind in the days and weeks following his procedure. And his healthcare providers are far too busy treating patients to check-in on him regularly during his recovery.
Rather than having only basic information about his surgery and recovery, my stepdad and mother could be more informed participants in his care. But in order to play an active role in his care – something that is proven to lead to better outcomes – they need information. This is accomplished with daily dialogue, something that is difficult when physicians have many patients to treat.
An Offer
At our company, we hear stories every day of patients whose lives were made better by daily engagement. There are the patients who appreciated the daily contact and reminders and the opportunity to message their care team with a question after their hospital discharge. Other patients have recognized the early warning signs of potentially serious complications because of the education they received through the platform. These are the stories that illustrate the impact of automated daily engagement between patients and care teams.
I have offered the hospital’s cardiac service a charitable donation of HealthLoop in my stepdad’s name. I look forward to meeting with the leadership team and am hopeful we’ll be able to support future cardiac patients with meaningful engagement.
My stepdad’s ordeal has made it clearer to me that patients in every community deserve access to daily engagement with their care teams. To that end, I’d like to offer up a proposal to all hospitals: For the first 10 hospitals that reach out to us, HealthLoop will match them dollar for dollar to implement our engagement solution in their cardiac service line.
Patients and their physicians should be sharing information every day to ensure good outcomes. The technology now exists to make this happen at scale and with limited effort. Though my stepdad will not benefit from daily engagement, thankfully, many other patients will.