Hopefully, One Day the Customer will know Best!
Healthcare Evolution: From Clinical Trust to Self-Driven Care in a Digital Age
While having a trusting relationship with a clinical professional remains central to health care, since the pandemic there are clear signs that people are more interested in their health and looking at ways to confidently manage and support themselves, without always needing to seek advice. Many apps support this wish, so now for many, consumerism is coming to health care, in a parallel way to how banking apps have changed the way people handle their finances. When they arrived people feared the loss of privacy and security. Now they are normal practice and writing a cheque is almost obsolete. Will people feel the same managing there own health data?
The signs are good. People question and challenge clinicians more, using curated clinical tools and there own self collected data. Post pandemic, virtual visits, especially for routine checks are far more common. But whole scale acceptance of a consumer driven approach remains slow and the concept of self management in health is still viewed with scepticism. Self management is a simple concept wherein a person has the skill and confidence to take care of their medical needs, perform their daily activities and manage their emotions, particularly in chronic diseases. Can this become the norm?
Navigating Healthcare's Future: The Imperative Shift from Clinical Dependency to Informed Self-Care
There are many groups to help train people to achieve this, but impact on relatively small numbers and of course manage the highly motivated. But to drive the necessary change the reasons behind moving to a patient driven approach needs to be explained at policy level. Sceptics will always say it is about saving money - and ultimately they are absolutely right. Most health systems rely on detecting problems early and attempting to fix them. But the net to find things involves an awful lot of interactions reassuring people they are well, often based on a short interview. This is highly inefficient and also at times, leads to delays and dissatisfaction for the consumer. A system that used personal data derived from the myriad technologies that exist that informs you if you need to visit a clinician and supplies the reasons why, leads to best use of professional time and an open and balanced consultation. This clearly also saves resources, but improves the consumer experience.
Without moving to this kind of relationship, things will only get worse. Increasing population and diminishing numbers of clinical staff is not going to improve the consumers outcomes. The policies need to reflect individual responsibilities around health. This is even more true when you realise that up to 80% of chronic illnesses can be mitigated by lifestyle change. That is entirely an individual decision. No one needs to go to a doctor to be told they are overweight. They need help to understand why and what they can do about it. Anyone on diabetic, blood pressure pills and cholesterol reducing tablets may escape a heart attack, but their chances of dementia are massively increased. Do they know that? Teaching the risks of unhealthy living and especially how to mitigate those risks is not part of the formal national dialogue - yet this week alone has seen a few dozen articles in the press on the things you can do to prevent dementia. If the press are interested, why can’t the governments be more explicit about how health services must evolve?
Harnessing Personal Health Intelligence: The New Dawn of Patient-Clinician Synergy
How do we change people’s mind sets? Technology has to be the answer to both increased efficiency and better personalised care in the future of healthcare. People need to have their own health data held securely on their smart phone, just as they do their financial data, for which they demand equal levels of confidentiality. People need to understand health risk better and be treated holistically, not as a series of target numbers as is commonly the case. Getting peoples test levels in to safe zones using countless medications is one way of achieving a degree of health in a population. But getting people to want to manage themselves has to be better. The psychology is there. Everybody wants to lower the dose of what they are on, as it is seen as getting better. Very few people finish a course of antibiotics once they do feel better. Do people generally know that an 800 calorie a day diet for 8 weeks can reverse diabetes? Should that not be the first offer, before even metformin?
The future lies in making knowledge of your own health as common as knowledge of your finances - and having the confidence to interact with the clinical system armed with personal data. That means that interacting with receptive clinical staff will get everybody to the right solution. It will be a great day in medicine when even in health the customer knows best!
Credits: Meet Roger Bullock MD, a highly accomplished geriatric psychiatrist with over 30 years of experience in the field of psychiatry. Roger completed his medical training at Keble College, Oxford University, and clinical medical training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. He specialized in psychiatry, specifically geriatric psychiatry, and established the Kingshill Research Centre. With an extensive career, Roger has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, several books, and chapters. He also served as Clinical Tutor and Academic Secretary of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Faculty of Old Age Psychiatry for 8 years. Roger is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and has received awards and recognition for his contributions to the field of mental health.
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