Articles

How Digital Health Lays the Groundwork for Future Healthcare Strategy - Eric Wicklund

Baptist Health is one of many health systems using digital health to improve its ICU services and connect care providers throughout the Arkansas-based 11-hospital network, improving care at the bedside and enabling small, rural hospitals to reduce transfers and care for more patients. Executives say the platform, which has been in use for roughly 14 years, allows them to coordinate care from the main hospitals in Little Rock and give outlying hospitals with fewer resources the support they need.

As the healthcare industry moves toward the concept of hospitalizing the sickest patients, it's turning the concept of remote patient monitoring around. Telemedicine platforms and digital health tools are being deployed within the hospital setting to capture more patient data and send it directly to who most needs it, no matter where that care team member is located. That may be the nurse down the hall at a central station who's keeping track of all the patients in a specific area, or the hospitalist in Little Rock assigned to watch patients in a small hospital a few hundred miles away.

While technology was trained on caring for infected patients and reducing the chances of exposure for care teams, forward-thinking health systems were eyeing strategies that took them beyond the pandemic, where digital health would be used inside the hospital to refine and direct care to where it would be most needed.

That requires a different way of thinking, and one that is challenging health system leaders to recognize that tomorrow's hospital will be considerably different. It will involve more integration, as services are coordinated through digital health channels, and an understanding of how nurses and doctors can be redeployed to improve care management.

For now, the health system is focusing on the inpatient network. This includes coordinating care with the smaller, more remote hospitals in their network, where ICUs are either small or nonexistent and a patient transfer to a larger hospital might take dozens of phone calls. Linking to the larger hospitals in and around Little Rock enables those small hospitals to expand their ICU capabilities, even create ICU beds where they didn't have any, and care for more patients, keeping them closer to home and their families instead of shipping them off somewhere distant.

In some cases, Baptist Health is using telemedicine carts to manage care, and many rooms are being equipped with tablets that synch with the health system's Epic EHR, allowing not only providers to connect with the patient record but giving patients a means of connecting with friends and family, or for those who need interpreters.

The platform has also allowed Baptist Health to expand the reach of its specialists, giving those smaller hospitals access to pulmonologists, infectious disease and wound care experts, and lactation consultants with more services on the way.

Health systems need to reimagine how care is delivered, expanding the platform to cover patients no matter where they need that care, and offering services that interact with the communities they serve. The hospital may sit at the geographical center of that platform, but it will no longer be where everyone goes to get care.

—Adapted from “How Digital Health Lays the Groundwork for Future Healthcare Strategy,” HealthLeaders, by Eric Wicklund, Feb. 1, 2022.