In a Becker’s Hospital Review webinar sponsored by Vida, three leaders from Vida discussed the challenges of delivering individualized care at scale — and described how technology can help care teams integrate multiple treatments into a personalized care plan that drives positive outcomes at lower cost. The presenters were:
- Kevin Knight, chief marketing officer
- Veeneta Lakhani, chief growth officer
- Gretchen Zimmermann, head of cardiometabolic care and prescribing
Three key takeaways were:
- The healthcare system has many barriers to delivering personalized care. According to Mr. Knight, factors like cultural differences and lack of provider integration complicate creating an individual care plan and delivering personalized care. “There’s a big difference between Guatemalan culture and Cuban culture or having diabetes and depression or obesity and anxiety,” he said. Major barriers include:
- Cultural factors. Overcoming language barriers and cultural factors, like traditional food preferences, is real. “We also need to think about issues like whether a culture supports accepting care,” Ms. Zimmermann said. “We run into resistance to accessing mental health care or even admitting you have depression and need help. It’s very taboo in particular cultures. Building trust and rapport is a process; it’s not something you can do in a 15-minute visit.”
- Chronic conditions. Many patients have diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. “It’s not uncommon to see these three conditions clustered together,” Ms. Zimmermann said.
- Provider integration. Complex patients often have relationships with multiple doctors. “If they’re not connected,” Ms. Lakhani said, “we’re effectively increasing costs of overlapping activities and crossovers of medications and care plans.”
- Social isolation. “There’s a big difference for an aging senior who is living alone versus someone who’s well supported by their kids,” Ms. Lakhani said. “Social isolation plays a real role, both in the way that people feel and the way they’re cared for.”
- Food insecurity. This is not only an inability to pay for food, but also includes not having access to healthy options. “Many members live in rural areas and rely exclusively on the Dollar Store as their main source of food,” Ms. Zimmermann said.
- Aging population. Personalization also means helping older patients become more comfortable with technology. “We can use humans to support people who are not comfortable downloading an app,” Ms. Lakhani said. “That doesn’t mean you’re using a low-tech solution; it means you’re using a high-tech solution that’s just not as visible to the patient.”
- Individualized care plans can deliver excellent outcomes. Ms. Zimmermann shared a story of a patient who was a diabetic on insulin, living below poverty level, with low health and tech literacy. “She also had untreated depression,” she said. “We screen for mental health conditions and train our providers to go deeper to identify other factors that might be preventing them from reaching their goals. It’s a very complex process.
“Over the course of a year, our registered dietitian worked with this patient and helped her make better choices,” Ms. Zimmermann said. “We were able to help her wean off of her insulin, which is a huge cost savings for her. We saw clinically significant reductions in her A1C, she lost 20 percent of her body weight and her depression was reduced by 85 percent.”
- This personalized approach to healthcare for complex populations can be scaled using technology. Technology drives better care management for human providers. For example, apps and connected devices log key metrics; and data is shared with providers, along with machine-learning powered recommendations. The result is a more personalized, sustainable care plan for each member.
By combining real human care and technology, providers can deliver scalable, repeatable outcomes for members and paying organizations.
To register for upcoming webinars, click here.
