News Feature | June 12, 2014

Patients An "Underutilized Resource"

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Patient-Centered Care

Personalized health IT which incorporates data from individual patient’s perspective could be the next big thing when it comes to value-based care.

“Patients' and caregivers' increased adoption of PHIT can help providers alleviate growing pressures on their practice economics and work-life balance, and PHIT can be a key linchpin for health providers migrating toward value-based care,” explains Healthcare IT News.

A resource from HIMSS, Personal Health Information Technology, notes that tapping into patient information as a resource is key to the success of patient-centered and value-based care. Summarized simply, “Patients are the most underutilized resource” in the U.S. health system, as Dr. Charles Safran of Harvard testified to the House Ways and Means Committee of Congress in 2004.

"Providers and patients must continue to partner together to improve the health status and overall population health in the U.S. Health Information technologies are a tool to make that partnership a reality, and an empowered patient," said Mary Griskewicz senior director of healthcare information systems at HIMSS.

According to the HIMSS resource, consumer adoption of PHIT is accelerating due to a convergence of social and economic forces:

  1. growing dependency on digital technologies in everyday life
  2. expectation of real-time access to services
  3. increasing clinical and financial responsibilities for patients
  4. pressure on providers to embrace value-based payment and incentives for patient outcomes
  5. regulatory and legislative mandates

Griskewicz will present a session at the upcoming HIMSS Government Health IT Conference to be held June17-18 in Washington, D.C. Healthcare IT News reports that the session will explore the value of patient engagement and activation, help spotlight key drivers of patients and consumers' demand for personal health IT and help attendees scope out opportunities for consumer-facing personal health IT in connecting care with physicians and providers.