CMS & McKinsey Agree: Digitization Is a Necessity for All Hospitals

As healthcare payers shift their focus to value-based care, smart hospital leaders recognize that digitization is necessary to make that critical transition from volume to value.

Why Digitize?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) clearly sees the connection between digital patient connections and value; digitization is woven into the fabric of every new incentive plan the organization introduces. Why? CMS is insisting on engaging patients throughout their entire episode, not only during the in-hospital stay. Technology enables this expanded engagement.

Hospital leaders who promote consistent digital interactions before, during and after the hospital stay will see the greatest return on patient care, outcomes and cost—the 3 most important measures of value-based care. 

What Concerns About This Common Surgery Teach Us About Patient Engagement

The most recent issue of Consumer Reports had some pointed words about hospitals with high rates of Cesarean section deliveries. In an article detailing its evaluation of C-section rates in 1,200 hospitals nationwide, the consumer advocacy journal concludes that, in low-risk pregnancies, the biggest determinant that a woman will have a C-section may be the hospital where she chooses to deliver her baby.

It isn’t the first time an inferred link between C-sections and hospital practice has made headlines. The New York Times ran an opinion piece in January saying the same thing.

About 1 in 3 newborns (nearly 1.3 million babies) are delivered by C-section in U.S. hospitals each year. The surgery has been the most commonly performed operating room procedure here for almost a decade, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

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.