Independent Medical Practice Demurs Amidst Emerging Innovative Models of Care.

Innovative Care Delivery Model Needs A Logistic And Infrastructural Update

Illumination initially published this article on Medium!

Amidst imminent transitions across the medical care continuum and along with evolving Merrit-based physician reimbursement model, so is the model of care delivery system. As a consequence of that transition, independent medical clinics and physicians' performance, quality of care, and efficiency are coming more than ever under scrutiny.

Unlucky or not, the 3rd party healthcare payers are amongst, if not the only, redefining players in the medical care delivery metamorphosis. In fact, according to a report , there is substantial evidence that the payers are contemplating facilitating such transition through Physician ownership, technology, and enablement.

The new care delivery model concept rests on enabling physicians to deliver higher-value care to their patients. Payers seem to have inspired such a strongly rhetorical approach amid the radical shift in medical care delivery landscape demand in the United States and the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is clear today that healthcare systems have pockets of excellence in care delivery, the U.S. healthcare system in particular. Yet, there is a lot of room to improve the value proposition . Indeed, medical science and health technologies have contributed to such advancements. Regulatory changes and the application of myriad incentives across the healthcare industry have transformed how independent physicians deliver care to their patients. Consequent to the latter shift, the newer care delivery model is constantly redefining how healthcare interacts and functions. For instance, a physician's role in caring for the sick inevitably expands to preventative whole-person care. And their responsibility is swerving from periodic visits to ongoing medical care, thus stretching the spacetime of patient care from facility-based settings to omnichannel and hybrid alternatives.

Our future physicians will have to deliver medical care to patients by leveraging their core strengths in patient engagement and discernment. They must adopt systems with data, advanced analytics, and innovative logistics .

The new Independent physician practice must be able to expand its reach outside their facility into patient homes and lower-acuity care settings.

Third-party healthcare payers have the prospect and an incentive to play an active role in meddling in the destiny of how physicians deliver care to patients and how they make their ends meet. That is also why they will demand end-to-end visibility into every patient's medical care needs and utilization habits across physician practice settings.

Indeed, we are at the fast track from standardized patient care to personalized healthcare solutions.

Delivering Modern Care Delivery Model

The sundry care delivery models are currently in the pipeline. Even though they may vary in mission and vision, nonetheless, all conform to one fact:

The current healthcare system utterly lacks relevant infrastructure and delivery logistics to house any medical care delivery approach.

Various care delivery models constitute three main "pillars":

Patient Interactions, Ecosystem Interactions, and Practice organization.

Indeed the essence of a high-quality medical service, thus the care delivery model, is its ability to accommodate in-depth and genuine relationships with patients, which includes sustaining continuity of care regardless of where the patient is in the healthcare system. Such a system demands a transparent, real-time interoperable connectivity logistic that can conform to the needs of in-person patient clinic visits and remote encounters.

The successful care delivery model must utilize the said logistic system toward shared decision-making with patients, including getting feedback and translating these criticisms into substantial modifications.

Ecosystem interactivity involves designing and clinging to policies, protocols, and procedures. It demands cognizance of various clinical tests and treatments to prevent repetition and patient harm. However, that kind of system will foremost succeed given the transparency of the healthcare technology platform and that every virtual and in-person interaction amongst all the stakeholders of a patient transpires in tandem with one another.

Most of all, it is a system with patients holding their custody.

Practice organization that upholds a high-value system employs qualified multidisciplinary staff, capitalizes on their strengths, and promotes them to more challenging roles with more eminent responsibilities within their internal institution.

True, as workstations are the epitome of "Ant Hammock," whereas delivery of medical care is collaboration. Thus, let us consent; that the era of showing up to the clinic, visiting a few patients, and getting paid is over. The modern epoch requires a current Medical practice organization and a more robust organizational arrangement.

One of the significant challenges of encouraging independent physicians to transition toward a new care delivery model is "building the will" to change.

As unbending as most physicians may be, they must start cultivating their mindset around strategy, process, and drive as to why they need to change the way they practice and how disruption should materialize.

Physicians must be willing to learn about alternative patient care models and their incentives. Furthermore, they need to see the importance of transparency in the contemporary healthcare logistic infrastructure.

The ideal innovative model of care is a system that invariably allows everyone in the healthcare domain can "independently" search, find, purchase, share, and exchange any service or product from any location and distance. It is a system with human intervention, and technology automation continually operates synchronously over the secure decentralized cyberspace. And that virtual operation is the mirror portrayal of its real-time in-person panorama. (Hybrid) I call the latter scenario a Cyber-Physical-Human system (CPHS), the necessary logistic infrastructure to accommodate optimal patient interaction, ecosystem interactions, and practice organization.