Baird Global Healthcare Report 2016-2017 Global Healthcare Report | Page 11

with higher return potential tend to be older, sicker and poorer.
These consumers are inherently harder to engage with and
activate through technology.
There are many innovative companies focused on this area.
Welltok, for example, supports employers and health plans by
organizing various health improvement resources, giving the
company access to unique data and insights into successful
patient engagement strategies. Meanwhile, athenahealth has
been very successful in selling its population health platform
to large healthcare systems, in part because of stronger patient
engagement capabilities (beyond simple analytics and risk
stratification).
Doing Data Differently
To create the transparency around quality that consumers
want, providers are increasingly focused on measuring,
reporting and improving the patient experience. This is
commonly achieved through patient experience surveys
administered following a visit to a hospital or physician’s office.
Press Ganey has seen significant demand for its census-based
surveying product, which uses electronic methods to survey
all of the patients who visit a provider (not simply the 300 paperbased surveys required by the government). This results in four
to five times more data for the hospitals, which provides
greater insight into the patient experience and how to
improve future results.

The Consultation Will Be Televised
The remote diagnosis and treatment of patients using
telecommunications technology offers a number of important
capabilities to the healthcare system and is expected to be a
high-growth area within healthcare IT.
Consumer/employer-oriented telehealth platforms such
as Teladoc can provide convenient low-cost access points for
consumers and can improve cost trends for plan sponsors
(typically employers). Additionally, for hospitals and physicians,
such platforms can increase patient engagement and optimize
physician schedules. Remote monitoring is another interesting
area within telehealth, which can provide more consistent
specialty coverage and clinical expertise, especially for rural
providers with lower patient volumes.
A Positive Prognosis
Consumers in the U.S. have an ever-increasing incentive to
engage more actively with the healthcare system. This ongoing
change will require the adoption of new tech- and data-driven
solutions for all key stakeholders within healthcare: patients,
employers, providers and payers. While engagement strategies
represent an emerging and important frontier, the more established growth areas addressing consumerism include quality/
cost transparency, telehealth and revenue cycle. As large health
IT vendors seek to establish consumer-oriented capabilities,
we expect acquisition activity will remain robust.

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