“Oh, that hospital, they kill people over there.” Family members and nearby residents in Washington, Georgia, told Dr. Cheryl Whitaker this throughout her childhood. In her community, fear of healthcare was rife.
No one would visit a doctor unless they were seriously ill, Whitaker relates in her engaging TED Talk. If they went to the hospital, it was straight to the emergency room. And her neighbors rarely returned. Untreated, their diseases had regressed so far that there was little that the hospital could do.
Advanced cases of manageable conditions — including diabetes, hepatitis, and high blood pressure – were commonplace. Much of this was due to “white-coat syndrome.”
Unfortunately, the problem is growing. Since the onset of the pandemic, Americans have increasingly shied away from seeking in-person medical support, as The New York Times reports.
At the same time, digital health — telehealth and remote patient monitoring, for example — is gaining acceptance. Yet for digital health to be transformative — ubiquitous as well as equitable — it must engage people like Dr. Whitaker’s childhood neighbors.
The Obstacles to Access
Race and income are likely the biggest barriers to healthcare access. But other factors come into play, as Whitaker and her research colleagues discovered: transportation difficulties, mental health, and a belief in home remedies or alternative treatments.
In recent times, the ivermectin debacle and the pushback against vaccines continue to contribute to the latter becoming a significant hurdle to better health.
However, it is crucial to avoid overlooking fundamental flaws within the healthcare system itself. As Dr. Roger Jansen, chief innovation and digital health officer at Michigan State University Health Care, writes on social media: “We don’t have a system, but a bunch of individual entities doing what is best for their own entity. A system would be nice, but we are far from it.”
Obviously, reinventing the healthcare system is an incredibly complex challenge. However, innovations in digital customer experience may remove many of these barriers to accessing healthcare and provide the foundation for a more patient-centered future. Here’s how.
Digital Healthcare: The Answer to Overcoming These Issues?
As senior analysts at Forrester put it: “Future healthcare success is rooted in exceptional CX.”
A growing chorus of leaders say digital CX transformation projects can overcome the obstacles to access. Early diagnosis from a smartphone — as opposed to arranging, waiting for, and getting to a healthcare consultation — is an example of the potential benefits of going digital.
Of course, broadband access is a sticking point for many. Remarkably, 7% of Americans do not use the internet, according to Pew Research Center. Nevertheless, healthcare startups aim to harness the power of digital to shake up the system and increase healthcare accessibility for everyone.
Health Grizzly is one example. The company’s goal is to make accessing healthcare as easy as other online activities. “We’re doing that by bringing the vast and growing universe of virtual care together with personal health guides to help people find that care,” says Erin Russell, founder and CEO.
During a discussion with Impetus Digital, Russell revealed her plans to help those in “digital deserts” access healthcare. “You have to create a solution which doesn’t require much bandwidth … You have to be able to text with them to help them find the care that they need. There are services that are doing this and doing it successfully.”
Bigger providers are also making progress through innovation. Boston-based Amwell, for instance, is expanding access to virtual critical care across six rural hospitals in Georgia, and its plans for digital CX go much further.
In a webinar with Executives for Health Innovation, President and Co-CEO of Amwell Dr. Roy Schoenberg shared his vision for the future of healthcare. “We have to think of telehealth as an opportunity to completely redistribute healthcare,” he says. “It is a way for us to reimagine how healthcare resources can be spread around the country … how we can collaborate with different disciplines.”
Moving Forward with a Patient-Centered Approach
While it is easy to critique the current state of healthcare, digital innovations are already improving patient experiences. Enabling clinical staff to capture patient-reported outcomes, monitor health remotely, and gather information in real-time – medical professionals can better treat patients.
Further benefits include early identification and treatment, better coordination, and inter-professional teamwork. These empower patients to be active partners in their care.
But digital healthcare teams face two significant roadblocks: making digital healthcare viable in “digital deserts” and convincing the public of the value of these services.
A patient-centered approach to digital transformation is perhaps the best route forward, though such thinking is hardly new. Research by the Picker Institute, which dates back all the way to 1993, provides eight principles for patient-centered care: access to care, continuity and transition, involvement of family and friends, emotional support, physical comfort, information and education, coordination and integration of care, and respect for patients’ preferences.
Accessibility is the very first principle. However, almost 30 years later, it remains a significant issue. Of course, healthcare systems are more precise now, with respect to social determinants of health and the need to address these matters. Indeed, personalization in CX will increase further. Nevertheless, healthcare systems must progress much further to meet each of the eight principles above.
In order for digital healthcare to truly be transformative, healthcare systems will have to figure out quickly how to incorporate new tools — by building the tools themselves, which can delay implementation, or by partnering with technology providers.
Either way, the tools are crucial, alongside a deeper understanding of community, Whitaker says. “If you understand the broader community, you can hone in on the individual and be effective. Then, if you arm your staff with great tools, they’re able to go out and make a great difference.”
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Charlie Mitchell is an award-winning writer on customer experience.