Medical Homes - Homes of Value

The assumption is when a discharged patient comes back, hospital benefits because it can fill an empty bed and bill for more care! That could be an over-exaggeration but the federal government says that Medicare pays $17.4 billion a year for unnecessary return visits.

Massive Budgets, Heartening Results?

A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund among countries like the U.K., Canada, Switzerland and certain other European countries found less medical errors, care coordination failures and duplication of tests in the case of chronically and seriously ill adults who received care in medical homes. However, the United States stands out having the highest problems paying medical bills on one hand and on the other, patients suffer due to lack of needed care thanks to higher costs associated with it. Moreover the proportion of those reported not visiting a doctor, not filling a prescription or not getting recommended care is significantly higher compared to other countries,” writes Mike Miliard, Managing Editor of the Healthcare News quoting the study. “Also there are gaps in coordination of care” among other flaws, he adds. According to the study, another major issue in the U.S. is concentration of cost-related access problems and medical bill burdens among adults under 65 years of age.

According to the opinion of Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis, despite spending far more on health care than any other country, the United States practically has more number of people with illness or chronic conditions having difficulty affording health care and paying medical bills. “That shows the need to gear up the Affordable Care Act driven reforms towards improving coverage and controlling health care costs” he further adds.

Technological Push – the Immediate Need

Countries like the U.K. and Switzerland have different healthcare systems than what is prevailing in the U.S. Yet these two European nations are leaders in having rapid access to primary care where patients are able to gain access to care even after hospital-hours. There are few gaps in coordination and few patient-reported medical errors. That means patients who are connected to a medical home need better support for managing chronic conditions, better communication and better coordinated care that give them more positive care experiences.

According to a research report by MarketResearch.com, “global patient monitoring system market will reach $9.3 billion in 2014 and it would minimize hospital stays resulting in cost reduction and increase business opportunities to healthcare providers, with better financial effectiveness. Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) is an area where technical advancements are expected to come up with major contributions.” Jonathan Linkous, CEO of the American Telemedicine Association holds the view that “this will put providers in the driver’s seat when it comes to choosing the best way to deliver healthcare”.

Healthcare technologyas a vertical seeing massive recognition is not enough. One needs to recognize the individual problem areas and specific solutions countering the same. One may not achieve the economies of scale if there requires being a large scale customization with each solution, but it would certainly be highly cost effective wherein one would save a lot of wastage of funds. The current trend of iPhoneand Android medical appshitting the market is redefining the rules of the game and the outlook on return on investments.