High-tech and High-touch Strategies can Complement Each Other
There are many priorities in healthcare—heal patients, make appointments convenient, adopt proven technologies, and many others. Healthcare consumers want digital tools to help them manage their own health, but they also want a warm, empathetic touch from a caring human. Although these priorities might appear to be at odds with each other, I believe they can be complementary, and even synergistic, if we approach them the right way.
We must ensure patients receive high-quality care while sticking close to loved ones, which may be the most empathetic thing we can do for them. Providing them with the right access at the right time is key.
In a recent guest post I contributed I shared how high-tech and high-touch work together – see the full Healthcare Informatics article. Here are a few reminders as we move forward with quality care in the digital age:
- As healthcare transforms to better accommodate patients’ needs, more care will be delivered outside of hospitals and clinics, including at patients’ homes.
- We believe that as digital healthcare gets better and better, we'll be able to keep many more patients out of our hospitals and clinics to heal in places where they feel more comfortable.
- The most important questions we can ask: "What do you want as your life goals from a health standpoint? Do you want to make it to your daughter's graduation? Do you want to see your grandson get married? Do you want to be able to climb a flight of stairs? Would you like to be able to go fishing again? Do you want to be able to drive your own car?"
jcpenny at HiQ
7 年boy
One group often overlooked in healthcare whose very charter is to provide compassionate care is the group of clinical chaplains. Compassionate presence, non-judgmental listening and one-on-one human contact defines the clinical chaplain at all levels across the continuum, from perinatal care to hospice. Healthcare systems could do well to assess their staffing levels in chaplaincy as well as in nursing to determine whether more of these clinically trained and board certified professionals need to deployed for patient care and staff support, particularly in high acuity areas of medicine.
Perioperative Leader in Level 1 or II Hospitals | PhD-C MSN BSN, RN CNOR, CSRN, S-RNFA, ST
7 年Excellence through people, process, and the best in class health informatic technology (HIT). Striving to build out user friendly design and implementing adoption of a new "tool" is a required skill set. We must pass the torch to the next generation where they were born with skills that exceeded our generation. When healthcare was solely driven by physician practices, pay for service model, and financial reimbursement the healthcare model was not transparent and redundant. Through immigration of real life tasks to drive analytics...technology and healthcare could eventually eleviate task fatique. With new legislation and governance, the patient can become isolated from touch. Excellent article. Thank you for sharing and onward we move forward to see artificial intelligence(AI) evolving into healthcare practices.
Administrator at Cleveland Clinic
7 年Good article and good insights. Achieving that balance between the personal goals and the biomedical goals could be a stretch with some patients. Listening to what the patient is telling us should always be a motivating force in what we do. With digital medicine the risk of becoming even less personable is a continuing reality. Setting strategies to defend against that risk are a clear provider priority.
Retired
7 年Thank you Dr. Harrison-great article! Having options that will increase access to healthcare is so important.