The Patient Revolution

Chapter 7

Implementation Part 3

We've talked about motivation, adherence, and choice, now—the first three consumer challenges we identified as our criteria. The next couple sort of blur together: coordination and effectiveness of care. How might we improve the coordination of care among healthcare providers, and how might we increase the effectiveness of healthcare services?

What we learned from the blueprint exercise was that consumers want time with their providers, and not to be “herded like cattle,” as one interviewee said, and that doctors have information on them so that they don't feel like they're starting from scratch with each new doctor. Coordination and effectiveness are broad issues that mean various things and are large challenges to tackle. We could also argue that effectiveness would improve if coordination (and motivation, adherence, and choice) existed. But let's approach it in a more focused way.

Both coordination and the effectiveness of care could be enhanced by a lot of things we've already discussed: providers leveraging personal health clouds and self-generated data, using population health analytics to gain the 360-degree view, and using behavioral analytics to reach out more effectively to individuals. But the real issue is that patients are frustrated by the system—going from doctor to doctor without a single place for all their health information, having to fill out their history a hundred-and-one times, having very limited time with the provider, ...