Three people who've been newly diagnosed with diabetes are discharged from the hospital on the same day. Who's most likely to be re-admitted soonest?
That would be the one with the worst credit rating. Someone who can't keep track of his or her finances probably won't be able to keep up with his post-discharge regimen.
And yet, says Harry Greenspun, MD, senior advisor for healthcare transformation and technology at the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, what mHealth or telehealth program monitors a patient's credit rating as part of a plan to reduce preventable hospital readmissions?
Greenspun took to the stage Wednesday morning in San Diego to help kick off the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance's 8th Annual Convergence Summit, focusing on the topic "Selecting the Right Tools for the Right Population in the Right Markets – Lessons from the Field of Healthcare Transformation." His point was that mHealth and telehealth programs won't succeed unless they're directed at the right people with the right health issues and they pull in the right data.
"Stuff that actually matters is not stuff that we collect," he said.
Greenspun was one of a handful of speakers to hit the stage in rapid succession Wednesday morning, a strategy of the WLSA to keep the conversation fresh and the ideas ongoing. That strategy was presented by WLSA co-founder and CEO Robert McCray, who kicked off the conference by noting that traditional healthcare "can't innovate fast enough," and instead needs to pull in and integrate ideas from outside normal channels.
"I think we have to expand our thinking," he argued.
McCray, whose conference drew some 300 attendees and featured 60 presentations and 150 organizations, offered an all-too-common refrain in his opening keynote when he pointed out that the nation's healthcare system is in transition. But he said technology is no longer the inhibitor to better healthcare, and argued instead that the nation's providers have to instead look beyond the concept of "healthcare" and hone in on health. That, he said, means changing attitudes.
"We have to change the culture," he said.
As part of that change, McCray offered a different take on the "triple aim" that healthcare leaders are focused on. His version: Better health, lower cost, and more societal productivity.
McCray's directive was taken up by Joseph Kvedar, MD, director of Partners Healthcare's Center for Connected Health in Boston. Kvedar – whose Connected Health Symposium each fall mirrors the convergence summit in that it brings in concepts outside the norm to discuss digital health – pointed out that the influx of mobile health monitoring devices, "big data" and unique messaging is enabling more and more consumers to, in essence, be their own doctor.
Kvedar noted that his center is now testing its Text2Move program, which encourages participants to exercise and adopt a healthier lifestyle by collecting data from mobile monitoring devices and sending out personalized motivational text messages twice a day.
"Imagine if we did that for everyone," he mused.
The point, reinforced shortly thereafter by Greenspun, is that healthcare has to get out of its pay-for-volume way of thinking and adopt a pay-for-value approach, which emphasizes outcomes and does away with the idea that providers are only needed when people are actually sick.
His response? Make healthcare social, set health and wellness goals for consumers that they can actually reach, and make sure the data and the incentives are there to support the outcomes.
And, said McCray, adopt a new philosophy: "Healthy people have more fun."
