Why Conditions are Ripe for Enabling Care Everywhere
The healthcare industry is rapidly moving beyond patients always having to visit hospitals and clinics in person toward care delivery from anywhere. Due to technologies, like Wi-Fi, 5G, and mobile devices, healthcare has become more convenient, efficient cost-effective, and equitable for more people.
About 30 million people in the United States live in “healthcare deserts,” areas where the local population has limited access to healthcare due to a scarcity of providers, medical facilities, or long wait times for appointments. Care access is also affected by considerations including affordability, internet access and health literacy, further restricting care access.
These healthcare deserts are most prevalent in rural areas – regions also hit with recent hospital and service line closures. Razor-thin hospital margins and clinician shortages challenge the ability to expand services, creating new opportunities for mobile technology to fill the gap.
Expanding care in more diverse settings
Care delivery is reaching more diverse settings, all requiring connectivity across locations and in-between. When hospitals open a new clinic or ambulatory surgical center (ASC), they need to access systems at the flagship hospital, possibly built decades earlier and requiring new wiring and cabling.
Further, mobile diagnostics units, including for MRIs, require fast and reliable bi-directional access to patient information.
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices also assist in expanding care delivery, presenting significant opportunities for improving healthcare outcomes. By leveraging digital health resources such as telehealth, RPM, and wearable devices, healthcare providers can extend their reach and deliver care more conveniently and efficiently. These technologies not only reduce costs but also enhance health equity by making care more accessible to underserved populations.
To truly benefit from these tools, they must connect into the care ecosystem and share data with care teams, caregivers and into the patient medical record. Both Wi-Fi and 5G technology continuously share data points indicators, such as blood pressure and heart rate, with 5G offering greater security, more capacity for connected devices, greater service reliability and mobility. Use cases that traditionally would be expensive and potentially less reliable to stand up, can be done leveraging 5G technology.
Recognizing the potential benefits of delivering care outside of traditional hospital settings, payers are beginning to reimburse for care provided in lower-cost environments. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) now supports home-based care through the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) initiative, allowing certain hospitals to treat patients with inpatient-level care at home, and increasing Medicare payment rates for home health agencies this year.
New billing codes for chronic care management (CCM) address monitoring between appointments for chronic conditions including arthritis, asthma, atrial fibrillation, autism spectrum disorders, cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, substance use disorders, diabetes, hypertension. These changes are helping fuel demand for connected care and providers’ ability to offer it.
Why 5G is relevant for healthcare
With 5G revolutionizing industries through higher bandwidth, lower latency, better security and its ability to connect more devices than its predecessor, national mobile carriers are making significant investments in 5G network technologies. These efforts are enabling solution partners to build care tools with these benefits, plus be at the network edge and seamlessly connect partner systems, patients and medical providers.
A peer-reviewed study recently found that “…widespread adoption of 5G technology by healthcare systems enables sick people to access specialists who would be unavailable and receive correct care more conveniently.” Industry analyst firm Frost & Sullivan also notes that 5G combined with machine intelligence, data analytics, and the internet of things (IoT) could enable new ways to tailor diagnostic tests while lowering hospital visits and medical expenditures.
5G enables practitioners to communicate with one another and to a central location, such as a hospital, as well as between patients. Think of traveling nurses or doctors performing rounds who can seamlessly communicate with each other and patients, while remaining apprised of a patient’s condition during transit. 5G enabled wearable health monitors can perform local data analysis, for example, a heart rate monitor that can independently analyze the data and provide the necessary response immediately to alert caregivers when a patient needs help.
Routine checkups for most chronic conditions typically include monitoring the disease’s progress and any emerging complications. Patient and caregiver lifestyles are improved by continuous mobile health monitoring tools that provide support over large distances, including allowing them to communicate directly with a doctor. This reduces the amount of time and money it takes to get medical help.
5G is more secure than previous generations with stronger encryption, privacy and authentication features, and its ultralow latency expands wearables’ capabilities. Looking ahead, 5G’s high bandwidth capacity will aid teaching hospitals as they expand their use of intensive applications using VR and AR to enable a better training experience.
Challenges and key considerations to enable care anywhere
5G can play a substantial role in transforming healthcare delivery by fostering care anywhere. Imagine the ability for caregivers to seamlessly transition between the care organizations where they have privileges to serve while maintaining security and authentication.
For these initiatives to work, there needs to be continuous mobility, with minimal dead zones or downtime for upgrades. Although mobile carriers are reworking their networks to support 5G, it is not everywhere yet and many rural areas that would most benefit from remote care are not yet equipped with the infrastructure to support it.
While there is growing recognition of the value of care delivered outside of traditional settings, formalized reimbursement programs remain limited, impeding the scalability of remote care initiatives. Ensuring data privacy and security are also critical considerations in the deployment of wearable devices and remote monitoring technologies.
As remote care initiatives become more mainstream, it is essential to recognize the diverse needs and capabilities of healthcare organizations. A one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to succeed, and careful consideration of individual requirements and resources is necessary for the widespread adoption of remote care solutions. Only by addressing these challenges can the vision of “care anywhere” truly evolve into “care everywhere.”
This article was written by Erez Yarkoni and Ashif Jiwani from MedCity News and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.
