Doctor-patient relationships are Improving with Health IT

For healthcare vendor management and hospitals, quality of care, access and cost effectiveness are critical goals, and thanks to advances in Health Information Technology (IT) and prime examples of it—like telehealth—these goals are getting easier to meet.

Health IT gives patients extended access to care in more remote areas, without the expense of building major medical centers in every city. The bottom line? Patients are healthier and requiring less service recovery.

When done right, service recovery preserves the reputation of healthcare facilities should glitches arise—but with exciting developments in Health IT these “glitches” are on the decline. If you’d like to know how, just ask Kaiser Permanente—a leading healthcare provider in 9 U.S. states that published results of their study on 34,423 patients in their Southern California location; these patients had diabetes, hypertension or both, and used secure patient-physician messaging to communicate with their doctors —you can watch a video of telemedicine in action here.

The results showed that when patients use e-mail to discuss changes in their conditions, request new prescriptions or adjustments to medication, they were up to 10% less likely to schedule a doctor’s visit—as well as 14% less likely to call their physician on the phone. But beyond these impressive percentages, Kaiser Permanente’s study was groundbreaking in its ability to show, for the first time, that electronic communications have a measurable positive effect on patient clinical outcomes—particularly for those with diabetes who followed medical instructions to the letter. Patients in the study seeking routine care also received more efficient treatment using My Health Manager.

Kaiser Permanente introduced My Health Manager in 2007 and has used its features—the most popular being the “E-Mail My Doctor” tool—ever since. With its 50-year history of leadership in Health IT and reputation as the world’s largest private electronic health system to prove it, Kaiser’s two-month-long study on secure patient-physician messaging showed significant improvements in HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) care measurements. The study also proved that, when the patient’s data is placed at the center of his or her care, patients receive better nursing care, enjoy stronger doctor-patient relationships, and improved overall efficiency of the hospital or physicians practice managing their care.

The Kaiser study followed hundreds of thousands of patient-physician e-mail threads in the My Health Manager system, which can provide patients with access to lab results, medication information, refill capabilities and appointment scheduling; in the messages logged throughout the study (over 630,000), it was concluded that 85% of patients initiated the e-mail, which clearly shows that health IT is empowering to patients, as are similar concepts in telehealth, which are increasing patient access and convenience in today’s healthcare systems.

Telehealth is available as store-and-forward technology (i.e. digital images, video, audio) and real time, the later of which features video conferencing equipment. In store-and-forward, the patient’s medical data is captured on a computer or mobile device and transmitted to the right specialist. This kind of Health IT works best in dermatology, radiology and pathology, where immediate response is not as critical.

Telehealth is going places, with some providers allowing their users to sync up the data shared during consultations with patients’ online health records; it’s called “remote monitoring” and its exciting examples include home based nocturnal dialysis and cardiac monitoring of remote ICUs. Home health nursing jobs will be greatly impacted by home telehealth and disease management.

Best of all, planet earth reaps the benefits, as the adoption of more telehealth services lessen our carbon footprint; the need for travel will be greatly reduced, and the expansion of healthcare facilities (once undertaken to meet increasing demands) are no longer as necessary. No wonder nearly three quarters of U.S. Consumers surveyed say they would use telehealth.

Healthcare employers: has your organization considered the possibilities of telehealth? Share your views and comments on telehealth and more with the Candidate Direct Marketplace today!