The value proposition of mHealth

Eighty percent of serious medical errors involve miscommunication during patient handoffs, and nurses spend two hours per shift on care coordination and communication, said Nick Adams, president and co-founder of Care Thread, during a webinar by Beacon Partners.

mHealth tools facilitate improved care coordination that can help prevent medical errors and miscommunication, while also curbing avoidable emergency department admissions, he said.

“We need to know more about what all providers are doing with their patients,” said Albert Puerini, MD, president and CEO of Rhode Island Primary Care Physician Corp., which recently decided to invest in mHealth solutions.

In his experience, clinicians spend a great deal of time tracking down all the providers within a patient’s care team and finding patient data—leading to inefficient workflows. In the emergency department, for instance, staff must rely on “inaccurate and unreliable” patient information while the patient’s primary care physician remains unaware of the admission.

“That provides us with a mHealth opportunity,” he said. mHealth can identify and map the care team in real-time, and if a patient has a problem or ends up in the emergency room, that person’s physician office would be notified immediately. When discharge occurs, physicians already are  engaged with hospital personnel, and their care team can receive notifications of diagnoses and new prescriptions and schedule follow-up appointments.

Other benefits of mHealth solutions are that they allow for secure mobile messaging that is fully encrypted with nothing written on the device, he said.

Puerini summed up the value of mHealth, which he said:

• Supports team-based, patient-centered care;
• Keeps track of the entire care team, eliminating the “who’s on first?” question;
• Reduces medical errors, unnecessary treatments and poor handoffs;
• Improves overall patient safety, satisfaction, quality of care and provider workflows; and
• Leverages existing technology solutions.

“With our HIPAA-compliant platform, we can get more compliance with patients. Patients embrace it because they also have smartphones and they love the idea of communicating with physicians,” he said, adding that the technology is allowing them to send images of minor conditions (i.e., swelling and rashes) to help physicians diagnose faster.

Clinicians are on board with the move to mHealth, he said. “Emergency department and hospital staff are extremely excited about this.”