The future of healthcare is in streamlining the care process to reduce the number of patients physicians see and improve informatics — but no one is ready to invest in these changes, two leaders told Becker's.
The COVID-19 pandemic taught systems that providing medical care through technology was viable, and that a different way to streamline care could reduce hospital costs.
John Mignone, MD, PhD, medical director at Seattle-based Providence Swedish Heart & Vascular Institute, told Becker's his wife recently visited her physician to order vaccines and screening tests based on her age.
"In my mind, did she really need to see a physician for that?" Dr. Mignone said. "We should leverage informatics to streamline care, allowing physicians to prioritize patients who actually need treatment."
The future of healthcare is not brick and mortar; rather, it lies in virtual care that optimizes medical regimens remotely with nurses and pharmacists, he said. Physicians should see only unstable patients.
It could help improve healthcare costs, but data is hard to come by.
"Unfortunately, informatics has predominantly been used for billing reasons, and we need to turn it into a tool for healthcare," Dr. Mignone said. "When I first joined my medical practice 10 years ago, I had better access to informatics than I do now. Everything has become so proprietary."
Data is the new currency in healthcare, Xuanya "Bill" Zhang, senior director of operations for Providence Swedish Heart & Vascular Institute, told Becker's. "And unfortunately, people are hoarding it a lot of the time."
If the healthcare informatics and payment system continues as they are, the cost of care will be passed on to patients, directly or indirectly, Dr. Mignone said.
The problem is the needed changes would require investment "at a time when there's no money to invest," Dr. Mignone said. "Everybody knows what we need to do, just nobody has the activation energy to do it right now. I think that's the problem here. We can't keep kicking this down the road."
Dr. Mignone and Mr. Zhang said the government has the greatest ability to start investing in these changes in healthcare, especially with its regulatory power. However, that change may be a long time coming.
In the meantime, they said hospitals can still take an active role to push change forward. This includes taking stock of existing staff and overall capacity and forecasting patient care volumes to prepare the teams to handle future needs.
"This approach is relatively easier to implement than influencing macroeconomic changes and can offer short-term benefits," Mr. Zhang said. "However, there are many structural issues to address in the long term."