Draft Proposal for a Regional Project

How Healthcare Can Be Improved and Costs Reduced Through Better Communication and Participatory Health

Executive Summary

mHealth Initiative Inc. seeks support to demonstrate how changing the behavior of patients and the general public toward health can improve health and reduce costs. This unique model demonstration project can be implemented in one or more cities or regions.

The project is designed to

• Reduce healthcare cost through better communication and a reduction of visits.
• Improve the quality of care.
• Reduce disparities in the delivery of healthcare.
• Encourage young people to live healthier.
• Make the healthcare system more convenient and efficient.
• Address the anticipated shortage of family physicians through a system that will facilitate delivery of care through more communication and fewer visits.

The project will enable people/patients/consumers to

• Better understand their health.
• Manage their essential health data on their cell phone or other mobile device (mDevice).
• Improve health through communication with wellness and care providers 24x7 as needed.
• Participate in an open and transparent decision process regarding health, health care, and wellness efforts.
• Participate in financial decisions related to their health.
• Receive more efficient care (easier appointments, reduced waiting time, less time lost with inefficient visits).

This project will link healthcare and wellness providers with one another and with patients/consumers in an unprecedented way within a community to help improve the health conditions of the population. It will enable providers to

• Be better prepared for decision making in care issues through advance information.
• Access guidelines, protocols, disease-specific information at the point of care.
• Make EMR documentation more efficient and tolerable through point-of-care documentation options.
• Provide better care through continuous communication with patients, other providers, and payers.
• Reduce crisis care (that is emergency care) through greater connectedness with the patient.

These goals will be achieved by stimulating all participants of the project to communicate more frequently, efficiently, and effectively. Mobile phones with their computing and communication capabilities are the inexpensive technology that will enable the Participatory Health Project to achieve better communication.

The project proposal includes nine parts, six of which are essential to the project and the remaining three optional. The essential components are

1. New patterns of continuous communication to make healthcare more efficient and reduce some visits.
2. Enabling all people in the project region to access their PHR data with their mobile phone. This will reduce medical errors, increase the quality of care, and reduce costs by reducing unnecessary tests and visits.
3. Creating systems that allow clinicians better access to resources (formularies, guidelines, policies, etc.) at the point of care.
4. Encouraging people to use Internet-based solutions that can change their life style and keep them healthier
5. Creating a better environment for point-of-care access to patient information and documentation, thus enabling clinicians to better document into the electronic medical record.
6. Implementing communication-based disease management for asthma, diabetes, hypertension, smoke cessation, etc. to reduce emergency visits, thereby saving costs and improving the quality of care.
   Optional components are
7. Enabling emergency responders to capture relevant health information of a patient electronically and sending it in advance to the emergency department. This may include the design of a region-wide record locator service in the event a patient’s health data cannot be accessed from her phone.
8. Combining public health efforts with this project: by
   1. Automating selected reports from providers and patients on their progress in specific conditions that impact the public health, e.g., flu epidemics, HIV/AIDS, TB.
   2. Tapping into a wealth of information within the Participatory Health community.
   3. Establishing targeted disease surveillance within the region.
   4. Designing and implementing systems that can notify people in case of health emergencies such as cases of bioterrorism and natural disasters.
9. On-line appointment systems to enable patients to identify which providers are available when and where and to make and change appointments online.

mHealth Initiative will be the enabler of the medical community. It will create the playing field for patients and providers to participate and for companies to compete in providing services. The outcome of this project could potentially influence the national strategy on health.

The project is designed to demonstrate

• Meaningful, practical use of the concept of better communication in healthcare.
• Before and after measures of healthcare costs as influenced by enhanced communication.
• Savings in healthcare costs through higher efficiency.
• How patients can be motivated to become active partners in their wellness/health care.
• How young people can be drawn into managing their wellness/health.
• How disparities in healthcare delivery can be reduced through improved communication.
• Better and less costly outcomes from disease management based on ongoing communication in a participatory healthcare environment.

To find out more about mHealth Initiative’s demonstration project proposal, click here.