Despite achieving significant advancements within the healthcare industry, only 55% of Americans have access to affordable healthcare. As healthcare technology continues to evolve, the future of affordable healthcare lies in our ability to integrate cost-saving technologies into HCPs daily medical practices. With HCPs spending nearly 16 minutes per patient visit in the EHR workflow, EHRs and HCP Management Systems have become a great ally to facilitate automated assistance and personalized HCPs communication at critical points of care. To capitalize on this opportunity, it is imperative for key healthcare stakeholders to integrate technology-powered solutions within EHRs for optimized delivery of relevant messages to the right HCP at the right moment of care to reduce overall healthcare costs and improve clinical care for patients.
Understanding The Current Affordability Gap
1. High treatment costs
A 2024 industry report reveals that only 47% of adults under 50 in America can afford healthcare, indicating a five-point decline since 2022. The report further states that younger adults are three times more likely to be cost desperate compared to adults above 65 years of age. With high treatment costs influencing patients to compromise on their treatment by cutting down on prescribed medicines. This non-adherence in treatment can lead to worsening health conditions and hospitalization, eventually increasing healthcare costs and burden on HCPs, adding emotional and mental stress to illnesses, and lead to poorer health outcomes.
2. Low offset utilization
As pharmaceutical companies are creating offsets like coupons and co-pay assistance programs to make branded drugs more affordable, drug costs for patients can be cut down considerably, promoting improved treatment adherence, especially in situations of chronic conditions where treatment costs run high. With only 15% co-pay utilization rate observed among commercial brand prescription fills, many eligible patients remain unaware of available assistance programs, indicating a significant awareness gap among patients and HCPs.
Bridging The Gap: Enhancing HCP Awareness About Patient-Assistance Programs
About 42% of HCPs today are not aware of the appropriate support programs for their patients. Hence, the first step to maximizing the utilization of patient assistance programs is to apprise HCPs about available offsets as per patient eligibility during critical points of care. However, it is not ideal to rely solely on HCPs for increased utilization of patient assistance programs due to their already hectic patient care schedule. To combat this predicament, it is imperative to embrace technology and integrate it within HCPs EHR workflow to automate the identification of patients’ conditions, severity, and financial situation, in a HIPPA-compliant manner, and recommend the most effective cost-intervention programs.
Reducing Financial Burden: Integrating EHRs with Cost-Saving Technologies
Given that EHRs are central to HCP workflows and are platforms where actual decision-making occurs, it is strategically imperative to optimize these systems through integration of advanced and secure artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, enabling more efficient and comprehensive care to patients with different socio-economic backgrounds.
Incorporating technology driven solutions within EHRs empowers HCPs to receive treatment-specific and patient-personalized affordability solutions through an integrated, platform-agnostic technology at critical points of care. For instance, high-tech EHR integrated solutions can trigger assistance eligibility messaging within real time based on data pertaining to HCPs’ clinical actions and individual patient’s eligible benefits. Through AI, data repositories in EHRs can be analyzed and transformed into an intelligent ally to support HCPs decision-making ability based on available patient assistance programs.
To understand better, let’s explore the capabilities of AI-powered EHR solutions in promoting affordability in healthcare:
- Enriching HCP-patient conversations
With 73% of patients in a recent survey reporting that the healthcare system fails to meet their needs, and 64% saying HCPs should understand their health journey better, there are obvious gaps between the information available and its usage in effectively treating patients. If employed wisely, technology driven solutions can leverage patient-led data and transform EHRs into intelligent systems that deliver hyper-targeted messages to HCPs, informing them about patient’s medical history; possible risk factors; as well as available patient assistance programs based on their illnesses, severity, and financial status.
- Increased Utilization of Affordability Programs
By establishing technology-powered connectivity between HCPs’ EHR workflows and pharmacies to share discount coupons directly, tech-enabled EHRs ensure optimal utilization of these coupons as patients would no longer need to carry coupons and can access their medications simply by visiting the pharmacy within the eligible affordability program.
- Leveraging Patient-Led Data for Better Health Insights
By analyzing patient data in real time, tech-enabled EHR systems can proactively identify and recommend appropriate diagnostic tests and procedures. This ensures. Early diagnosis facilitates timely intervention and treatment, prevents progression of disease reducing the need for expensive treatments and hospitalizations in future. Maintaining patient anonymity through HIPAA-compliant use of patient-level data is crucial for any marketer. Therefore, it’s essential to partner with the right certified marketing partners.
To conclude, by integrating EHRs with cost-saving technologies, the future of affordable healthcare is within reach. As EHR messaging is relevant, impactful, and easy to deliver, it is imperative for it to be leveraged judiciously to improve therapeutic care and increase affordability, ensuring that the mentioned above futuristic solutions are leveraging patient-led data while ensuring full HIPAA-compliance. Through incorporating data-driven decision-making and targeted cost-intervention programs messaging within HCPs medical practice, they can deliver high-quality care at a lower cost, ultimately enriching the nature of HCP-patient interaction.
Vijay Adapala
Adapala is a seasoned executive with 25 years of experience in healthcare marketing, ad tech, digital media, and consumer tech. At Doceree, Adapala oversees the end-to-end global supply partnerships with healthcare platforms and publishers. Prior to joining Doceree, Adapala served as the GM at Amazon Publisher Services for web and mobile app publishers, where he led the strategic vision, successfully launched and scaled Amazon's ad tech solutions, and spearheaded global expansion strategies. Prior to Amazon, he held leadership positions at Yahoo and Motorola. He holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a BSEE from Purdue University.
Connect with Vijay Adapala on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adapala/
