A healthcare experience that offers an integrated, holistic approach is more critical than ever. It transcends traditional healthcare approaches by emphasizing the importance of putting the patient at the center and treating them as a whole person, rather than looking at separate conditions. It’s a concept where care providers, health plans, and other critical stakeholders actively work together to improve a patient’s health and wellbeing.
An integrated, whole health approach addresses immediate health needs while driving to longer term outcomes by blending preventive care, behavioral health support, pharmaceutical needs, and consumer empowerment through personalized interventions. It redefines patient care by fostering shared, data-augmented engagement between patients and care providers, ensuring every health aspect is considered and enriching the health journey through improved outcomes and patient satisfaction. And, the industry has seen some success with integrated models of care, such as in accountable care organizations, with improved health outcomes and higher patient satisfaction.
A Comprehensive Approach
Delivering on this whole health experience is often easier and more impactful when the patient’s team of care providers, health plans, and other stakeholders collaborate, leveraging their wide-ranging capabilities in areas such as primary care, behavioral health, chronic disease management, medical benefits management, and pharmacy – driving a better consumer-centered healthcare experience.
Bringing together diverse expertise enables a comprehensive care strategy that addresses the multifaceted needs of patients, ensuring that every health encounter contributes positively to their overall well-being. When partners are aligned in their mission to improve the health journey, care is more seamless, effective, and ultimately helps people lead healthier lives.
This approach can manifest itself where one partner helps the patient with one part of their care journey, such as post-acute care, and the other partner collaboratively works with the patient on medication management.
Data-Driven Insights for Holistic Care
We know patients often lack timely access to care, and because of this sometimes skip or delay care. Adding to this lack of convenient access, many people find the healthcare system confusing, possibly leading them to avoid care altogether.
Central to improving whole health, consumer experience is the ability to transform data into actionable insights. Organizations that are committed to appropriately building out data-driven capabilities excel in this area by using data to develop personalized, innovative healthcare actions that yield meaningful outcomes.
By turning information into insights, these organizations anticipate patient needs, providing actionable strategies that complement existing treatment plans. This proactive stance ensures that care is comprehensive and truly reflective of a whole health experience.
A Case in Cancer Care
Cancer is one of the most challenging health battles for patients. It’s also a disease that not only impacts patients, but also their families, their friends, and almost everyone else around them. In taking a whole-health-experience approach to cancer care, care providers can help improve the patient’s health outcomes and quality of life by working together to coordinate treatment plans. This collaborative effort is critical in delivering the highest quality of care, support, and effectiveness for the patient.
Carelon’s Cancer Care Engagement (CCE) program takes a whole health approach to driving health outcomes supporting both patients and providers through the journey. CCE uses data-driven insights to proactively identify individuals who may benefit from enrollment in the program, guides them to care, and then connects them to top-tier experts.
These patients are also connected with Cancer Care Navigators (CCNs), who serve as a single point of contact for patients and help connect the dots with the patient’s care team during the entire care journey. In addition, CCNs give patients access to additional resources and tools that can help ease understanding of their treatment and contribute to an enhanced whole health experience.
Patients should not feel alone in their cancer journey, and CCE equips and supports care providers with tools to coordinate care across the multiple care teams and with data and best practices to drive higher quality patient care.
The Future of Whole Health Experience
Innovations such as integrated health platforms, AI-enhanced health solutions, and more personalized treatments promise revolutionary changes in healthcare delivery. The future of healthcare lies in its ability to provide a whole health experience, one where each health interaction is part of a larger, enhanced healthcare journey towards wellness.
It’s also going to take care providers, patients, and all stakeholders truly working together and connecting the dots to enhance the healthcare experience, provide more seamless care, and ultimately better health outcomes.
Peter D. Haytaian serves as executive vice president at Elevance Health and president of Carelon
Gautam M Shah serves as Carelon’s chief product officer
