High-tech nurses leading the way
May 21, 2016
By Bipin Thomas
The U.S Department of Health and Human Services is projecting a near-term shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs) that amounts to an anticipated shortfall of 20,400 PCPs by 2020. The patient experience in the U.S. is clearly set to become a lot less hands-on. For many, technology will close that gap. Technology, after all, can take care of many of the patient’s strictly medical needs: it assists in diagnosis, enables advanced forms of surgery and optimizes the delivery of care. Health care professionals are expected to provide a compassionate, high quality and safe environment for promoting healing on a more fundamental level. The comprehensive focus on human elements fosters harmony of the mind, body and spirit — a harmony that some studies suggest can accelerate the healing process.
Today’s patients are not willing to compromise high touch for high tech — they expect both. The burden of meeting those expectations in the absence of adequate PCP staffing will almost certainly fall to nurses. Nurses who can combine technological knowledge with traditional bedside experience will become even more valuable in this new context. So where are the opportunities for nurses with technology competence? Here are a few areas where the combination is already making an impact.
Transitioning to home-based care
Hospital-based nurses are currently leveraging today’s user-friendly technology platforms to help patients make the transition from the hospital to their home. This process involves several steps:
• Developing an electronic care plan.
• Obtaining electronic consent from patients.
• Configuring medical devices for patient monitoring.
• Assisting patients with the use of medical devices and smart sensors until they are able to utilize them independently.
• Assigning the patient educational videos.
• Analyzing each patient’s electronic database on a regular basis.
Nurses who master technology-enabled remote patient monitoring platforms proactively are extremely valuable: they are the model high-tech practitioners, and hospitals and providers are rightly creating new high-paying positions to attract qualified people to fill them. Those organizations will be rewarded for attracting and retaining talent in these positions, as they will help implement advanced care interventions and thus reduce patient readmissions.
Real-time monitoring of current patients
Nurses are already on the front lines of patient care, but they can make even more of an impact when they are empowered to adjust instructions and prescriptions based on real-time monitoring. Nurses need to be certified on the specific EMR system used at the hospital, and must master the patient monitoring platform and its configuration screen. Nurses today regularly use these systems to schedule personalized alert messages and provide specific instructions for patients.
Soon, nurses should be involved in developing a comprehensive care plan for each patient using computer-based tools. More importantly, they must be equipped and trusted to analyze real-time data to detect when something abnormal is happening to the patient. In some instances, nurses could use this system to instruct prescription adjustments — say, when a congestive heart failure patient’s weight exceeds the daily limit.
Managing chronic diseases
Chronic disease management is where the combined approach stands to make the greatest difference. Nurses with chronic disease pathway expertise combined with advanced technology competence are in high demand. Even health insurance companies are announcing new high-paying positions for nurses who can handle members’ care management using a suite of technology platforms. Nurses in these positions must:
• Learn to effectively identify high-risk patients using advanced analytics platforms.
• Apply their knowledge of chronic diseases to configure the system and design a personalized chronic disease management pathway for each high-risk patient.
• Use smart technologies to alert patients about acute risks (detecting blood flow in the patient’s legs and informing them of a possible deep vein thrombosis).
• Interpret the data coming from wearable medical technology to educate and coordinate care for patients with chronic diseases.
The ability to analyze the continuous flow of patient data should enable nurses to spend meaningful one-on-one time understanding their patients and building a relationship with them.
Assisting in clinical research
Pharmaceutical companies want physicians to run human clinical trials for new drugs, but physicians do not have the time to enlist eligible patients because they are overwhelmed with requests. Nurses can step into this role, and can identify the right patients for these trials using sophisticated technology platforms to configure inclusion and exclusion criteria for each study.
About the author: Bipin Thomas is a renowned global thought-leader on consumer-centric health care transformation. Thomas is a board member of HCBN and chairman of ICURO, a digital business outcomes management organization.
The U.S Department of Health and Human Services is projecting a near-term shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs) that amounts to an anticipated shortfall of 20,400 PCPs by 2020. The patient experience in the U.S. is clearly set to become a lot less hands-on. For many, technology will close that gap. Technology, after all, can take care of many of the patient’s strictly medical needs: it assists in diagnosis, enables advanced forms of surgery and optimizes the delivery of care. Health care professionals are expected to provide a compassionate, high quality and safe environment for promoting healing on a more fundamental level. The comprehensive focus on human elements fosters harmony of the mind, body and spirit — a harmony that some studies suggest can accelerate the healing process.
Today’s patients are not willing to compromise high touch for high tech — they expect both. The burden of meeting those expectations in the absence of adequate PCP staffing will almost certainly fall to nurses. Nurses who can combine technological knowledge with traditional bedside experience will become even more valuable in this new context. So where are the opportunities for nurses with technology competence? Here are a few areas where the combination is already making an impact.
Transitioning to home-based care
Hospital-based nurses are currently leveraging today’s user-friendly technology platforms to help patients make the transition from the hospital to their home. This process involves several steps:
• Developing an electronic care plan.
• Obtaining electronic consent from patients.
• Configuring medical devices for patient monitoring.
• Assisting patients with the use of medical devices and smart sensors until they are able to utilize them independently.
• Assigning the patient educational videos.
• Analyzing each patient’s electronic database on a regular basis.
Nurses who master technology-enabled remote patient monitoring platforms proactively are extremely valuable: they are the model high-tech practitioners, and hospitals and providers are rightly creating new high-paying positions to attract qualified people to fill them. Those organizations will be rewarded for attracting and retaining talent in these positions, as they will help implement advanced care interventions and thus reduce patient readmissions.
Real-time monitoring of current patients
Nurses are already on the front lines of patient care, but they can make even more of an impact when they are empowered to adjust instructions and prescriptions based on real-time monitoring. Nurses need to be certified on the specific EMR system used at the hospital, and must master the patient monitoring platform and its configuration screen. Nurses today regularly use these systems to schedule personalized alert messages and provide specific instructions for patients.
Soon, nurses should be involved in developing a comprehensive care plan for each patient using computer-based tools. More importantly, they must be equipped and trusted to analyze real-time data to detect when something abnormal is happening to the patient. In some instances, nurses could use this system to instruct prescription adjustments — say, when a congestive heart failure patient’s weight exceeds the daily limit.
Managing chronic diseases
Chronic disease management is where the combined approach stands to make the greatest difference. Nurses with chronic disease pathway expertise combined with advanced technology competence are in high demand. Even health insurance companies are announcing new high-paying positions for nurses who can handle members’ care management using a suite of technology platforms. Nurses in these positions must:
• Learn to effectively identify high-risk patients using advanced analytics platforms.
• Apply their knowledge of chronic diseases to configure the system and design a personalized chronic disease management pathway for each high-risk patient.
• Use smart technologies to alert patients about acute risks (detecting blood flow in the patient’s legs and informing them of a possible deep vein thrombosis).
• Interpret the data coming from wearable medical technology to educate and coordinate care for patients with chronic diseases.
The ability to analyze the continuous flow of patient data should enable nurses to spend meaningful one-on-one time understanding their patients and building a relationship with them.
Assisting in clinical research
Pharmaceutical companies want physicians to run human clinical trials for new drugs, but physicians do not have the time to enlist eligible patients because they are overwhelmed with requests. Nurses can step into this role, and can identify the right patients for these trials using sophisticated technology platforms to configure inclusion and exclusion criteria for each study.
About the author: Bipin Thomas is a renowned global thought-leader on consumer-centric health care transformation. Thomas is a board member of HCBN and chairman of ICURO, a digital business outcomes management organization.