By Terry Rowinski

We’re at a critical juncture in evaluating the role of the healthcare system in American life.

For years, we’ve been embattled in a healthcare debate that’s caused deep political division. More recently, we’ve experienced the worst pandemic this country has seen in at least a century and an ensuing economic recession. Experts estimate that anywhere from 25 million to 43 million people will lose their health insurance due to job loss, further encouraging the rallying cry to revolutionize healthcare.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already made a deep and lasting impact on people’s health and the economy. While it is a crisis for our industry, it’s also an opportunity. There is much room for improvement, particularly when it comes to the consumer experience aspect of healthcare.

New technology will become mainstream quickly
The COVID-19 pandemic has fast-tracked new and developing technology that can help providers offer patients quality care without risking further exposure.

For example, smartwatches and devices utilize the Internet of Things (IoT) to enable healthcare providers to monitor their patients’ health stats at any time (theoretically). IoT technology is just beginning to be used at scale in blood glucose monitors, pill dispensers, temperature monitors, digital scales, bioimpedance devices and more – offering extraordinary untapped potential.

With a patient’s health data readily available, physicians can create a virtual representation or “digital twin” of a patient. Using this digital twin, doctors can track a patient’s health over time to spot any abnormalities; for example, to track a patient’s recovery after surgery. This technology provides a critical opportunity for provider care amid social distancing.

By adopting healthcare trends like these, providers can make remote care more mainstream, allowing them to continue treating patients while limiting in-office care.

Telehealth is here to stay
Many providers had already implemented some kind of telehealth option before March 2020, even though not all insurance providers – including Medicare and Medicaid – were willing to cover it. As we’ve seen recently, telehealth both meets customer demand for convenience and limits exposure amid the pandemic.

In the first weeks of the pandemic, many insurance networks lifted their restrictions on telehealth, giving providers and their patients a greater opportunity to realize the benefits. Now that more consumers have experienced the convenience of remote visits, it will be hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently stated, “I think we'd have a revolution if anyone tried to go backwards on [telehealth]… This is now I think an embedded part of our health care system."

The potential for telehealth is endless: protection during a pandemic, meeting the needs of rural communities, connecting patients with expert specialists or simply assuaging a nervous parent’s fears in the middle of the night. While telehealth cannot replace many critical (and even minor) services, it can help people receive supplementary care and deepen their relationship with their provider.

The patient consumer experience must be a priority
Consumers today expect to have digital service options from the organizations they interact with, and yet healthcare continues to lag behind other industries. As stakeholders continue to evaluate the future of healthcare, the industry has to acknowledge where it has failed to make accessing healthcare easy for consumers.

While healthcare providers don’t need to compete with the latest apps or retail experiences, they can borrow from the standard practices that consumers have come to expect – especially those that make it easier to access healthcare from a distance.
- Some of the tools providers can implement to improve the experience for their patients include:
Secure, private communications via telehealth, messages and chat
- Self-service portals that make it easy to perform simple tasks like accessing records, making payments and managing prescriptions

It should be easy to understand and pay bills
Most of the current dissatisfaction with the healthcare system stems from rising costs – and the convoluted billing and payment systems patients have to navigate. Even among insured adults, a majority who recently had a major medical bill experienced higher-than-expected charges, confusing statements and/or “surprise” bills.

Billing practices that aren’t consumer-friendly will only increase frustration with the current health insurance model, leading to dissatisfaction both with the provider and the system.

While providers cannot control how health insurers bill, they can implement steps to simplify direct patient costs:
-Sending patients a simplified statement that consolidates all of an individual’s or a family’s explanations of benefits (EOBs) and medical bills from that provider and/or organization for an entire month
-Work with networks to provide bundled payments – an all-inclusive, flat-rate payment for common procedures
-Offering flexible payment plans to help patients pay for their care (and encourage more treatment acceptance)

Healthcare administration will become streamlined
To keep costs down, healthcare system operations must become leaner. Because many providers lost revenue while non-essential procedures were restricted, organizations are having to learn to run lean operations and implement new business strategies to survive. For example, administrators and doctors can use AI and big data to make better-informed decisions about what they need to operate while ensuring quality patient care.

A leaner healthcare system requires systems to rely on each other. Larger systems can help to support smaller systems in a hub-and-spoke style of support to maximize resources for patient care. Now is the time for larger healthcare systems to answer the call to lead.

What is the future of healthcare?
Behind the call to improve the healthcare system is the desire for a better human experience. While we can’t predict the future, we can also use this crisis as an opportunity to shape it. The need to improve the patient experience has been long coming, and now is our chance.

About the author: Terry Rowinski is the president and CEO of Health Payments Systems, Inc.