Customers as partners: When access goes home
HBOC project takes patients on line
Are access managers willing to think of the customer as a partner rather than a passive recipient in the health care process? They’d better be, because as health care organizations become more consumer-focused, their customers will be offered the opportunity to link their homes electronically to their health care providers, sending updates of demographic information and scheduling appointments via the Internet.
That kind of partnership will come about sooner rather than later perhaps in only a matter of months, says Janeen Cook, executive director of strategic product planning with concentration on the company’s enterprise strategy for access management solutions at HBOC, a computer software company in Atlanta.
"The future is upon us," she explains. "Con-sumers should be able to preregister, schedule, contribute to their lifetime record. If they move from Elm Street to Maple Street, they can feed that into the repository."
The ability to establish a direct electronic connection to the home will allow health care organizations to address the demand side of health care, "to move from provider/payer-centric to consumer-driven systems," Cook says.
Access tools in the home
Paving the way for that kind of expanded consumer access is a partnership formed between HBOC and Berkeley, CA-based HealthDesk Corp. to offer HealthDesk’s personal health and care management software to HBOC customers. Through this arrangement, Cook explains, HBOC will extend its access management strategy to homes in the community as a key point of access to the integrated health enterprise.
The idea behind the HealthDesk partnership, she says, is to address how to give the consumer tools to manage health in the home, as well as Internet access to filtered, sponsored health information that is valid and credible.
"What the product is addressing is an exciting, emerging phenomenon," Cook says. "People are putting personal computers in right and left, and statistics and surveys show the major reason to go on-line is to search for health information. There is a hunger in the general population for health information. This is a big shift from physician knew best.’" On the other hand, she adds, "Now patients are coming in armed [with information] and dangerous. Much of it is unfiltered."
She compares the trend to what happened a few years ago with financial information. When products such as Quicken (personal finance software) were introduced, financial services companies were slow to react, but brokerage companies such as Charles Schwab responded to consumers’ desire for financial self-management by offering brokerage ser- vices over the Internet, Cook says.
Linking provider and patient
HealthDesk products, which include a general health-focused HealthDesk Online and Health-Desk Online for Diabetes, provide demand and disease management capabilities as well as two-way electronic exchange of information between the care provider and the home.
Scottsdale (AZ) Healthcare, a customer of HBOC and HealthDesk, got involved in the project because of the health care system’s relationship with DC Ranch, a growing planned community in Scottsdale, says Jim Cramer, vice president and chief information officer.
"Ultimately, HealthDesk will add value to our HBOC enterprise wide technology solution because it will update the lifetime person record’ [a patient’s lifetime medical record] from data provided by the consumer or patient, allowing us to fully achieve continuum-based care with the focus on health and wellness."
When completed, the community will include 8,000 new homes, he says, with built-in high-speed connectivity to the Internet and to DC Ranch’s internal network, RanchNet. In addition to reaching residents with the HealthDesk wellness and diabetes tools, Cramer says he sees the potential for scheduling appointments through the use of tools in the home. He also foresees "some level of branding," including an introductory page and information about the health care system and the opportunity for residents who aren’t in the customer index file to submit information "to pull together across all points of service a global customer index."
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