Humanizing Healthcare through Technology

The ever-evolving landscape of healthcare technology has shifted the way medical professionals deliver care. While many see this as a means to improve efficiency and reduce administrative workload, I believe that the true value of these advancements lies in their potential to humanize patient relationships.

The Point of Healthcare Technology

While preparing for a presentation on technology-enabled care at a university research event, I was frequently asked: What is the point of all this healthcare technology being used to drive efficiency? The question is valid. As we implement more advanced systems and tools into our practices, it’s becoming evident that they are reducing time previously spent on administration or documentation. This trend leads us towards an increasingly efficient process of delivering care.

However, my perspective diverges from the common viewpoint here. Instead of using technological advancement merely as a vehicle for pushing more patients through our clinics (the “if you’re not drilling, you’re not billing” mentality), I see its prime benefit in allowing us to be inefficient where it truly matters—building meaningful relationships with our patients.

Inefficiency Where It Counts

This may sound counterintuitive at first glance—after all, isn’t inefficiency something we should work against? However, when it comes to “non-billable” aspects such as relationship-building and patient communication—the soft skills in healthcare—I consider some degree of inefficiency crucially beneficial.

By making us more efficient in administrative tasks and procedural aspects of care delivery, healthcare technology provides clinicians with extra time—an invaluable resource which can then be invested into building stronger connections with patients. These enhanced relationships can subsequently aid those individuals in achieving better health outcomes—a fundamental goal within any health system.

Moving Towards Better Outcomes

In my book, Better Outcomes, A Guide to Humanizing Healthcare, I’ve extensively discussed the importance of patient-clinician relationships. They play a pivotal role in treating long-term diseases like chronic pain and kidney disease among other conditions.

The time saved through technology-enabled efficiency enables us to establish deeper connections with patients—a factor that could significantly contribute towards improving future outcomes. This approach also propels us away from the prevailing fee-for-service model and aligns us more closely with value-based reimbursement schemes—where payment is determined not by the number of procedures performed but by the quality of health results achieved.

Therefore, investing time into “non-billable” activities such as building stronger relationships with our patients becomes an essential component in securing positive outcomes down the line.

Summary

Healthcare technology holds immense potential for revolutionizing patient care—not only by making processes more efficient but also by providing caregivers with opportunities to humanize their interactions where it truly matters—their relationship with their patients.