Understanding Financialization in Healthcare with Stacey Richter

The healthcare industry must align itself toward a significant shift in its caregiving approach. The patient now lies at the central point of the caregiving process. The advantages of increased patient engagement are numerous, and this trend is swiftly turning into a requirement for success in the healthcare sector. Value-based care offers convenience, builds and maintains trust, and works toward efficient utilization of time and services. In this blog, let us explore how to achieve the quadruple aim of affordable patient care, better patient engagement outcomes enhanced patient experiences, and higher physician satisfaction.  

Financialization of the Healthcare Industry 

The healthcare industry’s financialization is undeniable. And addressing this concern is a must. Healthcare organizations must place an empathetic eye on patients at the receiving end of the entire process. Healthcare stakeholders must consider using a moral compass throughout the entire journey of caregiving. Healthcare unaffordability is a consistent concern and is regularly ranked among America’s most critical issues. 

Gallup just polled, and healthcare affordability for patients was number one on the list, higher than inflation and fear. Another KFF poll displayed that half of the adults in the U.S. say that a family member, or they, abandoned or delayed medical treatment because of its cost. The figures are piling. A quarter to a third of Americans are dealing with medical debt. One in eight Americans have debts over $10,000. It is the harsh reality of today’s healthcare system.   

Healthcare is treated like a standard financial asset instead of a natural resource driven by values. When the values that the healthcare system promulgates are in misalignment with the values of most Americans, one can witness extensive consolidated health systems that are more closely associated with big business than not-for-profit health. Money is essential, but it cannot be the only parameter. It demonstrates what financialization in the healthcare industry looks like.   

Healthcare Decision-making Framework – A Manifesto  

Creating a manifesto in any healthcare scenario involves three critical parameters. First, analyze the net positive for the patient. There’s always going to be an upside and a downside. There is always the possibility of raising one of the quadruple aim quadrants, and then another one will diminish.  

The second contemplative point is the caregiving process timeline. It may differ across varied scenarios, but a short to medium-term timeline is preferable to a long-term timeline. There are, however, multiple factors that could affect and extend this timeline.    

The third point of contemplation is the entities involved in the caregiving process. How many caregivers, physicians, and other healthcare professionals must be roped in? Finally, the interconnection of the caregivers and the net positive. It involves analyzing how healthcare professionals contribute to an enhanced patient outcome and higher gains.  

Adhering to an Organizational Healthcare Approach

Healthcare organizations need to be wary of complicated caregiving processes. A critical component toward success is adherence to an organizational approach in healthcare. It can be tricky sometimes due to the number of entities involved in the caregiving process. Multiple steps and entities step in and out of the panorama. Everybody can be but a cog in the wheel. Every healthcare entity’s role, responsibility, and ownership is limited to that cog. Therefore, people have yet to take responsibility for the overall impact of these micro decisions. Ultimately, the bottom line is affected by this lack of comprehensiveness.  

Organizational decision-making, a manifesto, ensures that all healthcare entities are involved and take responsibility for the bottom line. Analyzing the processes involved and whether the ultimate impact aligns with the healthcare goals is imperative.

The Need for Dyad Leadership  

Dyad leadership ensures that there is clinical involvement in leadership roles, along with financial entities. Team-based care should be guided by physicians and clinicians on the leadership team to create that balance. Healthcare organizations should be wary of Not My Patient Syndrome (NMP Syndrome). Real team-based care is the continual and active involvement of a clinician or doctor, who is closely linked through the entire caregiving journey, with a consistent eye on the patient’s needs and coordinating community resources. In a nutshell, the patient is placed at the center of the healthcare process and is educated and acknowledged every step of the way. 

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) – An example of Team-based Leadership  

Two out of five patients with end-stage renal disease do not know they have kidney disease. 50 to 80% of patients with CKD get put on dialysis in the emergency room, having had no prior treatment or no treatment from a nephrologist within the last six months. CKD progresses much slower if it is diagnosed early and treated correctly. Benefit Corporation is making efforts in this direction by identifying a golden mean problem. A golden mean problem is small enough to solve but big enough to matter.   

Most clinicians in this country, PCPs and otherwise, are unaware of the accurate way to diagnose and stage CKD. The severity of the disease is frequently underestimated, and it’s often caught late. We aim to assist clinicians and organizations to detect the disease and initiate treatment early.  

Bottomline  

A sustainable enterprise. The crux of this is that hospital patient outcomes are almost perfectly correlated to whether the doctor who admits the patient takes care of them through the caregiving journey. All entities must be relentless caregivers, patients, and advocates toward patient goals. With a clear drive to improve patient outcomes, value-based medicine is an essential advancement quickly becoming mandatory in terms of adoption among healthcare organizations. As consumer consciousness increases, the demand for value-based healthcare rightfully follows suit. Keeping patients healthy and engaged through coordinated care provides higher outcomes with a proactive approach rather than a reactive one. Explore more exciting topics and listen to insightful podcasts related to healthcare only on CareTalk.