Healthcare2030: Are You Prepared to Meet the Challenges?

This article by guest authors Merrily Orsini, MSSW, Pres/CEO corecubed, and C. Sam Smith, VP Business Development, AXXESS, reports the results of an exercise they conducted at MHCA’s 2016 Future of Home Care Conference & Technology Expo, held in January. During an experiential and participatory session, attendees considered the future of home care if we do nothing about it, and what we have the power to change – or at least how we can affect change – if we start now.

Getting outside of the day-to day issues that we face in our home health work allows us to start to envision the future. We need to focus, not just on the upcoming year, but on 10-15 years from now when demographic changes will impact so much in our world. We need to think about how the healthcare delivery system will look then so we can plan what to do now to change it. If we do nothing to change it, we will operate with a healthcare delivery system that is overburdened by more people needing care than we can comfortably and reliably staff, and regulations that stifle our abilities to provide services in a quality manner. Is there something we can do today that would change the outcomes for the future?

Overwhelmingly, the session participants saw workforce issues as the greatest challenge we have to face in our collective future. Also, while acknowledging the need to be aware of the need for personal touch, participants recognized the best opportunity to affect change with technology lies in telehealth, tele-monitoring or some use of remote monitoring to manage population health, when appropriate.

In answer to what factors will have the greatest impact on the healthcare delivery system, the ideas were varied:

The Model
New care models
Alternative healthcare
Chronic disease management and poly pharmacy
Increased demand for services
Individualized care
Dementia care at home
Changing reimbursement
Reimbursement for technology
Need for increased access

The Workforce
Supporting caregivers
Access to education
Immigration
Ethnic diversity
Livable wages
Staffing levels
Offering medical benefits to entry level workers

The System
Rising costs of health care
Lack of savings/resources by elders
Medicare bankrupt
Software that communicates
Internet access
Telemedicine
Triple Aim outcomes exceeded
Universal health insurance
Population shift

Clearly, the only way to change the future is to create it. Gathering ideas and thinking about what we can do is a start toward creating systems that will allow us to meet anticipated workforce shortages and deliver remote services that will address future needs, when health care at home will be a major solution to care.