We were so excited to see our CEO, Betsy Weaver, Ed. D., on Becker’s list of Female Health IT CEOs to Know that we asked her for more on what it takes to start and run one of Boston’s most innovative healthcare companies. Here’s what she had to say:

Will you succeed or die in digital America?

That is the question the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report, “Digital America: A Tale of the Haves and Have-Mores”, poses to all sectors of the American economy.

Looking at it through the lens of American healthcare—to tease out a road map for the business of healthcare—the report provides a compelling argument for aggressive hospital digitalization with the following key points:

Patients often face several health conditions at the same time. When speaking with their healthcare providers however, they may only mention the reason for that particular appointment and fail to bring up other health concerns that they consider to be unrelated.

This leaves you, as the healthcare provider, without the full picture of your patient’s overall health. Even with access to a patient’s electronic health record, there may be significant gaps. 

Understanding and being able to track your patients’ health-related concerns and questions is an important step toward providing better quality care. Thankfully, technology makes it easier to discover what’s happening in patients’ lives beyond the doctor’s office and hospital walls.

There are many solutions out there that engage patients at different times in the care journey. At UbiCare, we have always maintained that setting patient expectations earlier in the care episode is better to improve patient outcomes.

Research supports this, as well. In a Gallup study of pre-surgery patients who received education to set expectations, researchers found that going into surgery with a good idea of what’s coming afterwards had the biggest impact on patient satisfaction.