Involving patients in their own health care and helping them to use technology for monitoring, management and communication can improve treatment outcomes. So says the AHRQ in their recent study, “Innovations in Using Health IT for Chronic Disease Management.” In the big picture there appear to be some problems we must contend with:
1) Although some health care organizations may actually achieve a means to communicate and work with patients and providers internally, they are not actually achieving this externally. The ambulatory realm between patients and health care providers still holds a large void. Thus, the silos still exist and disable effective communication and coordination of care between health care providers with each other and health care providers with their patients. Thus, the silos continue to exist. Health information technology which enables bi-directional communication platforms between patients, providers and health organizations can help facilitate information sharing so that information becomes patient centered and relevant from anyplace at any given time.
2) Convincing patients to get beyond privacy and security concerns involves stringent encryption and authentication standards as well as patient education about the utility of these standards. Once that is achieved, patients can begin to appreciate how they can contribute to patient-centered care through a personal health record which is shared with and between health care providers. If the personal health record is sophisticated and includes physician prescribed and patient self-managed wellness, prevention and disease management features, this technology can enable more seamless flow of information from patients to health care providers and vice versa. It is important that health care providers begin to utilize these technology tools to improve coordination of care and that patients begin to consider their own personal responsibility to use these technology tools to ensure that their own care is optimized.
3) Patients will be more likely to use technology which incorporates them in their own health care if there is a third party payor.