The future of healthcare is in technology and value, agreed panelists at eMerge who spoke excitedly about the upcoming shift to consumer-centered care.
Retail healthcare was the first step toward the consumerization of healthcare, said Dr. Prakash Patel, chief operation officer of Guidewell Health, a move started by the creation of clincs at big-box retailers such as CVS and Walgreens that made seeing a doctor or nurse practitioner and getting quick care easier for consumers.
Next, Patel said, is telemedicine -- or communicating with patients though the use of a phone or a computer, the Jetsons-like doctors visits of the future.
And, in some ways, they are already here.
Pat Basu, chief medical officer of Doctor on Demand, spoke about the Doctor on Demand application which allows consumers to contact physicians through the comfort of his or her smart phone.
"Those doctors can diagnose you, treat you and if necessary prescribe a medication," Basu said. "The doctors love it. The patients love it. and I think it's great for the U.S. healthcare system."
These advances hope to return the power to the consumer, allowing them to get their care when and how they want it.
"You would never go into any other service industry and say you have to wait three weeks to get there, three hours to get in," Basu said. "We are now empowering citizens, as patients, to truly take control of their healthcare."
It follows a push toward value-based care that is reimbursed based on how well doctors can keep patients healthy and out of the hospital -- not how many patients a doctor sees every day or the number of tests a doctor orders.
The development of more transparency in medical data will play a big role in increasing the value to consumers, particularly by taking that data and turning it into something consumers can use to power their healthcare decisions, said Anatoly Geyfman, chief technology officer of Carevoyance, a healthcare data application for businesses.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is now rating hospitals on a five-star scale on patient satisfaction, aggregating a number of survey results into a form that is easer for consumers to understand.
Michael S. Weiner, director of healthcare strategic services at IBM, said the increase of data reporting and its importance to consumers when choosing a physician will create an incentive for doctors to perform better and push technological advancements in healthcare.
"This year is going to be a game changer," Weiner said.
- Chabeli Herrera
Michael S. Weiner, director of healthcare strategic services at IBM (center), speaks at the Future Advances in Medicine panel at eMerge Americas Monday with fellow panelists Anatoly Geyfman, chief technology officer of Carevoyance (left of Weiner) and Dr. Lou Gidel, medical director foreTele Medicine at Baptist Hospital (right).