If healthcare reform were left to healthcare professionals, we’d have nonprofit insurance companies, tax breaks for gardening materials to encourage good health, mandatory walks every two hours for anyone in a stationary job, and a doctor would take patients’ text messages.
That was just a sampling from hundreds of multicolored sticky notes posted by the attendees at this week’s Mayo Clinic Transform conference. Members of GE’s Healthymagination team spent time during the three-day conference leading brainstorming/crowdsourcing sessions that asked how to make healthcare better, touching on everything from health education to leveraging emerging health IT concepts.
What do healthcare professionals believe? Essentially, they don’t think anyone explains anything properly to anyone, and that the government and health insurance pay for the wrong kinds of treatment. Those aren’t necessarily revelations. But the practical application of those concepts may surprise you.
You can’t pigeonhole the medical community. You have hippie-ish ideas “More research around happiness, joy and respect,” views from the left like taxing fast food, and the more popular right-wing thoughts on tort reform. But in the end, the most common theme from the multicolored sticky notes that were pasted across nearly a dozen white boards was: If people were told things correctly, taught things properly and medicine was compensated for the things that made people healthier, America would be transformed.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
I don’t know if I buy it. Do you see yourself in these ideas? And what does it say about healthcare and political reforms that these are the ideas coming from the medical and life sciences sectors?
(Disclaimer: I participated in the brainstorming, but didn’t use any of my ideas below.)
Some of the most popular ideas …
Deliver healthcare in different forms — reduce visits to building and increase virtual consults
Let me text my doctor
Use care teams in hospitals instead of silos and specialists
Educate patient and family through interfaces and experiences designed for them
Stop overworking healthcare providers with nonpatient-centered tasks
Tell truths the way the patient wants to hear them
Consumers shouldn’t need a physician in order to get the care they need
Create a universal data language that is easily shared
Ideas to improve the healthcare system …
Get a tax benefit for keeping employers happy and well
Make sure healthcare providers don’t have to process 100 documents to complete a patient case — then they can give patients the time they need
Adjust med school debt for income
Reduce the cost of medical education
Engage and utilize local pharmacists in the healthcare team as patient advocates
More research around happiness, joy and respect
Provide healthy meals (delivered to homes) to seniors released from acute care
Match information gathering to patient work flow
Create a common health language
Create a national provider credentialing repository
Malpractice premium reduction
On improving quality of care …
Start earlier: More emphasis on WIC, Head Start, child care (primary prevention)
Connect clinical data to social data to payer data
Walk through the patient experience and design all experiences through that lens
Physicians should be paid for making people healthier
Down with EMR proprietary data!
Give consumers full access to their medical records (must be in a lay language)
Give nurses more time to do what they are trained to do — be patient advocates
Improving the patient experience …
If a device exists that causes pain, make sure a corresponding device exists to provide relief/comfort
Create waiting rooms that are more private and have better atmospheres
We had a healthy place instead of a hospital
Create an app that tracks medications being taken and administered
Use the Socratic method when diagnosing/discussing treatment: What does that patient think needs to happen and start a discussion/treatment plan?
Sell insurance across state lines — create a national exchange
Show patients a flow chart of what patients suffering from the same disease did in terms of physician appointments, drugs, surgeries, etc. Give them a road map based on previous patients.
Easy access to my medical records and the medical data is accessible to all healthcare providers
How to promote wellness …
More time off, allow and encourage wellness during the day
Make sure doctors understood the mind/body connection as well as the science of care
Have an annual comprehensive “wellness consult” with the appropriate type of provider
Nap times
Every two-hour walk breaks for stationary jobs
Health snacks at work and conferences (no candy or soda)
Have a wellness or health market as part of a neighborhood farmers market
Tax fast food
Tax credits for gardening materials
Stop the debate between whole and package foods. We need both
Drive-thru fruits and veggies
Along with price of healthy foods in grocery stores, also post rewards benefit of that food
How to harness IT to improve healthcare delivery …
Create a single integrated health network
Give everyone the technology (connected to the Internet)
Data about health was on a chip people carried with them
Allow the global professional to take healthcare records from Bangkok, Thailand to Rochester, New York in one second
Make a mobile device the hub for healthcare
Have a global online marketplace (like Amazon). It includes products such as healthcare services with costs; ads from providers; and consumers can comment, rate the services and have information on physicians as well
Provide better healthcare content
Eliminate state medical licensure so across-state-lines e-health is possible
Create personal preference records so providers can tailor services
Because the younger population is engaged in technology, use them as agents to promote well-being for the aging population
Create a wiki-style medical record. Each provider adds to the common story rather than starting over with repeating elements
Provide patient portals at the bedside for all patients
Cost
Reinstate mandatory physical education for K-12
Teach basic economic principals to healthcare providers
Health is taught all through the school year and not just two semesters or a class
Make insurance companies nonprofit
Get test results back quicker, which will reduce anxiety and stress
How to improve healthcare awareness/education
Eliminate all “silver bullet” TV ads
Make healthy choices cool and poor health stupid
Make sure there is no stigma around sexual health
Pharma companies provide easy-to-read drug pamphlets
Create an Olympics for health living
Incorporate health living into games for kids
Bring meditation into grade schools
Personal health maintenance was made a core study at schools
