No outcome, no income.
To create an outcomes-based healthcare system, one in which patients receive consistently appropriate care, the business of health and science must link the public and the private new industry models.
Using Informed Awareness to Transform Care Coordination and Improve the Clinical and Patient Experience
This eBook, in collaboration with Care Logistics, details how hospitals and health systems can facilitate more effective decision-making by operationalizing elevated awareness.
It’s a new balance. It’s also a delicate one to manage, with nuance and implications for policy innovation and market strategy that directly affects the lives of everyone in the world. Navigating the transition space means writing the next chapter in how the global health market works. Medical providers must work together to form a network of hospitals and doctors that provide the best care possible universally, regardless of location, need, or socio-economic status.
What Is preventing universal healthcare?
It will take a “big design” vision. Truly universal healthcare could create a world where all people, regardless of class or nation, have access to the care they need — without becoming destitute in the process of trying to recover personal or family health. According to the World Health Organization, protection from financial risk is just as important as the access to and quality of care; after all, quality care isn’t helpful to people who can’t pay for it. People who cannot afford their medical options do not truly have access to those options, no matter how geographically close or high-quality they are.
Because most hospitals around the world run as individual businesses, standards of care differ greatly from one location to another — not to mention the socio-economic, environmental, and individual factors that all play significant roles in the quality of patient care. These factors contribute to financial hardship, worsening the situations of already struggling hospitals and clinics, keeping a vicious cycle alive and well.
Health inequality affects even the most developed countries. In fact, a report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development revealed that the United States — a country with a deep history of healthcare inequality — ranks at No. 27 out of 34 industrialized democracies when it comes to life expectancy.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Accessible healthcare helps close this gap. Brazil, for instance, began implementing universal healthcare in the 1990s, and now more than two-thirds of the nation’s population takes advantage of it. Just a few years ago in 2013, Brazil saw a drastic drop in its mortality rates for avoidable diseases across demographics.
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this is at a relatively small scale. It’s up to industry leaders to take this concept (and the inarguable benefits it brings) to a broader level.
Navigating the Transition Space
To solve these issues, healthcare providers must collaborate with one another, using modern technology and data collection to share insights and streamline patient experiences.
Some organizations are taking a global approach and championing the value of data in global healthcare. More data — specifically, more data that is clear to the patient — helps patients make informed decisions, medical staff provide better care, and administrators optimize supply chains. When the right information reaches the right hands, different nations will be able to better identify (and work toward overcoming) their health challenges, putting them closer to the network of global care providers.
Unfortunately, getting the right information to the right people is not as simple as sending a few emails. Providers must continue to explore every new technology that streamlines data storage, retrieval, and communication. When providers can find and share information more effectively and quickly, hospitals around the globe will be able to provide better standards of care for their patients, bringing even the most disadvantaged hospitals up-to-date on the information they need to better serve patients. With access to real-time patient information, including both treatments and costs, providers can supply all patients with the treatments they deserve.
And of course, it’s not just about data — it’s about value innovation as well. Healthcare providers must also share ideas and new value frameworks with one another. When healthcare professionals combine their experiences and research, they unlock new processes and treatments, improving the lives of people all around the world. For instance, how important is interoperability in healthcare? It has become the defining challenge facing legacy healthcare systems, most of which are “kinetically trapped” in silos.
One example of this is a network of providers and practitioners from every country that met in Vietnam last October to drive more of these conversations. Every type of behind the scenes healthcare worker, from IT managers to researchers to data analysts, joined to discuss their current challenges and share solutions to improve the quality of care around the world. Every participant, even those from the most underserved regions of the world, had valuable insights to offer the group — providing the kind of balanced and diverse insights required to tackle an issue as complex as universal healthcare.
Reaching a truly universal status will take decades, but if technology continues to improve — and if healthcare providers remain committed to the good of all — the world could eventually see coverage become far more geographically comprehensive than we’ve ever seen before.
