instantly health

  Image by photosforyou from Piaxabay I was thinking the other day about the lessons of patient and physician engagement in specialty pharmacy and how that could transfer to providers. That is  meaningful engagement for managing population health, changing health behaviors, keeping physicians, referrals, and patients in the network, while improving engagement and experience. It occurred to me that specialty pharmacy has been engaging physicians and patients for a long time, long before "engagement" and "experience" became the corporate buzzword in hospitals. Specialty pharmacy is more than just a transactional drug fill. Due to the expense and side effects of many of the specialty pharmaceuticals, a high level of patient engagement by clinicians, customer service, and feedback on patient compliance and side effects is essential. Specialty pharmacy also requires a seamless and well-designed experience for physicians and patients. Image by Tina Koehler from Pixabay ...

The healthcare consumer will shell out $345 billion dollars this year for health insurance, co-payments, and deductibles. On top of that, they will spend another $271 billion on health-related items like gyms memberships, weight loss programs, exercise equipment, etc. That's a whopping $626 billion dollars out-of-pocket that are expected to rise for the foreseeable future. The healthcare consumer and patient are demanding value, price, and quality transparency from healthcare providers. Consumers want retail medicine, mHealth, and Telemedicine. All the while healthcare providers focus on market dominance and acquire physician practices to create market heft and then wonder why consumers are cranky? With all of this happening then, is the smartphone the tool for physician independence? And, can the use of apps, mHealth and telemedicine allow a physician or physician group practice to remain independent? In both cases, I think the answer is yes, with some pretty large ramifications f...