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The Participatory Healthcare Game - Out With The "Old" And In With The
"New" Perfect Patient...by Jim Bloedau of Information Advantage Group
How will the shift towards greater participation by
the patient in optimizing their health control costs?
The “old” perfect patient predicated their care on
someone else knowing more about their disease,
someone else delivering the needed care,
someone else monitoring their level of health, and
someone else paying for it (third-parties pay 88%
of all medical bills; it’s closer to 97% of hospital
care) – “the healthcare system will take care of me”
is still the mind set for most patients.
This thinking has matured to the point where people are seeking, and patient-facing
companies are eager to provide, medical treatment and products for what really are more
appropriately labeled “normal life conditions”, according to a recently published Brandeis
University study. The report highlights how “medicalized” conditions, like menopause, male
balding, body image problems and a host of other conditions are costing more than what is
spent on true medical disorders like cancer, heart disease or public health. This rush to
prescribe costly pills, therapy or intense medical monitoring was estimated to amount to
$77.1 billion in 2005, or almost 4% of the nation’s healthcare expenditures.
The “new” perfect patient puts themselves at “the center of their own care” and aggressively
takes responsibility for and actively participates in it. This model entails a shift from merely
being a passive patient to an activated consumer/patient of healthcare and this model is
what we need to control costs and get better care to more people.
If we could get every patient to behave like this, what would we do with the money saved?
What fixed and mobile tech could we buy for the consumer/patient to monitor their normal
life conditions and healthy living practices? How does the family caregiver fit in as a buyer of
tech for the chronically ill? What will be the best practices of traditional medicine that will
sustain the inevitable move to greater use of tech and participation by the consumer/patient
in their care?
Image Credit: Larissa