Patient-Centric Healthcare is a Failed Philosophy.

Is your job in healthcare to focus on and serve only the patient or is it also to serve others on the TEAM who are caring for the patient?

Patient centric healthcare as we currently practice it is a failed philosophy. We focus on serving the patient for a finite moment in time even though the patient's journey extends well beyond our specific tasks.

In this mindset, we have a system where we — yes, you and I — cause 400,000 deaths per year and 10,000 serious medical complications every day, costing the U.S. an estimated one trillion dollars a year. Additionally, 80% of these errors occur secondary to miscommunication during transitions of care.

Patient centric healthcare is not enough.  We need to realize that just serving the patient is not enough — we ALSO need to serve the fellow clinicians who are serving the patient. We need patient- and people-centric healthcare.

Healthcare is a team effort — especially when treating time sensitive emergencies where the personal and economic impacts are massive. Imagine a professional team sport where individuals only focus on their specific positions and only communicate with a single person on their team. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? How would they execute a complex play? What would happen when a planned play breaks down? How would they get back on track or adapt to the situation?

We don’t expect football players to do their jobs this way … so why do we only focus on our individual positions when people’s lives are on the line?

Let’s look at communications for time sensitive emergencies in your region.  It is precariously held together with radios, modems, email, fax machines, pagers, answering services, and phone calls. These tools keep our team members in communication silos as they allow for only 1-to-1 or 1-to-few communication. This gets even more complicated as our team members are often spread across multiple healthcare organizations and not physically in the same location at the same time. With these communication tools, how do we execute a complex protocol (i.e. play)? What happens when a planned protocol (i.e. play) breaks down?  How do we get back on track or adapt to a situation?  In 2017, it’s ridiculous isn’t it?  

We need patient and people centric healthcare teams, and a communications platform that manages real-time team communication across healthcare entities.

• Real-time: The communication needs to be REAL-TIME. The patient’s condition evolves over time. Available resources change. Unexpected events occur. Our system needs to be able to adapt to changing circumstances as the patient’s condition unfolds. Data in ePCRs and EHRs is great for retrospective analysis and billing, but it is not available for real time communication. AND, it struggles crossing multiple healthcare entities.
• Team communication: Every patient may have different needs that require unique team members brought together instantly. We need a central location for rapid communication that can be accessed by all team members. There is value in communicating with all team members. For example, what is the advantage of a medic giving a radio report to a single person at the hospital that will never take care of the patient versus giving an update that is instantly available for all team members who will take care of that patient? We need to focus on serving the patient AND the other people who will be helping serve the patient.
• Communication that crosses health care entities: While HIPAA-compliant messaging programs may assist with real-time communication in your organization, they don’t help unite regions and communication when patients arrive by EMS or are transferred from another organization. And prehospital alerting only helps with those that arrive by ambulance. Statistically, that’s less than ½ of the time sensitive emergencies. We simply need communication that crosses health care entities to give patients the best outcomes possible.

We have a healthcare communication crisis. It is time we put some things into perspective.

1. The economic and personal consequences of the communication crisis are greater than all of the deaths from gun violence, motor vehicle crashes, breast cancer, and the opioid epidemic combined.
   
   
2. We need to focus on serving our patients and our healthcare partners regardless of hospital or EMS agency affiliation. We must break down these communication silos and be able to communicate with each other in real time.
   
   
3. We need patient and people centric healthcare teams. We need a communications platform that manages real-time team communication across healthcare entities.

It’s about time.

It’s about people.