From the May 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
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.Back to HCB News
