Jean Drouin, MD, CEO and founder of Clarity Health Solutions, discusses how organizations can leverage technology to overcome obstacles in the healthcare industry as well as drive collaboration among staff.
Dr. Drouin be speaking at the Becker's 16th Annual Future of Spine + The Orthopedic, Spine and Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference. To learn more and register, click here.
Question: How should healthcare organizations leverage technology to foster a more collaborative environment?
Dr. Jean Drouin: As success in care delivery shifts to managing patients across several providers and sites of care over an extended period of time, the importance of effective communication and collaboration grows. Good collaboration begins with a shared understanding of goals, roles and expectations. Visibility and transparency help individuals to act in a timely and appropriate way. Feedback then creates the loop to learn and improve.
As obvious as it might sound, what's often missing today is a simple start-to-finish, step-by-step roadmap to set expectations and enable collaboration. Healthcare organizations should therefore invest in technologies that facilitate setting clear, precise and personalized plans, protocols and task lists — be it for a surgery or a care journey. Digital tools to connect patients with their care team, and care team members with each other, can be deployed to monitor and orchestrate progress across these planned journeys. Taking it a step further, automating the collection of data and linking interventions to outcomes then creates the means to provide meaningful and relevant feedback to drive improvement through enhanced collaboration.
Q: What do you think lies ahead for the healthcare industry in the next five years and how will technology help overcome obstacles?
JD: The basis of success and growth is about to change fundamentally. Health insurers will transfer a significant amount of risk to providers through programs ranging from capitation, bundles and pay-for-performance. Professional and facility fees will continue to get squeezed, while a new type of fee, call it the 'quarterbacking fee,' will increasingly be offered to those with the courage to take it on. Physicians and health systems will be rewarded for managing populations and episodes, receiving bonuses and penalties depending on their efficiency in doing so.
The practice of medicine will shift to one that not only involves managing patient risk, but also financial risk. Applying the same technologies used by banks to price and value derivatives, or by FedEx and Amazon to manage their supply chains, will be essential. Key capabilities will include predictively stratifying and matching patients to the best interventions, physicians and facilities; setting down clear protocols and roadmaps to guide care teams and patients; monitoring progress in real-time; and incentivizing adherence to minimize variation and optimize care.