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Direct advertising quick and easy access to popular medications may help generate revenue and satisfy investors. As companies struggle to find profitability and sustainable business models, the mission becomes harder to uphold. Even more so in today's tougher digital health environment. The pressure to match lofty valuations and justify outsized funding rounds is immense. Many doctors and nurses are disillusioned by traditional care and view health tech, with its loft mission statements and visionary founders, as a way to drive change. "We're just tech" is an unfortunate cop out.Ĭlinicians often aren't employed by these companies but rather serve as an "affiliated network." This arrangement creates an uncomfortable situation where digital health companies leverage clinicians for their licenses and ability to prescribe medications while leaving them on an island. Instead, doctors, nurse practitioners, and other clinicians ultimately bare responsibility (and potentially liability) for treatment decisions.
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#healthcare #medicine #work #success #healthcareinnovation #innovation #healthġ5 Innovative Ideas For Fixing Healthcare From 15 Brilliant MindsĪs HLTH approaches, this article raises important questions to consider about telehealth platforms and the pros and cons of care delivery by digital health companies.Īre these solutions merely software conduits connecting patients to physicians? In arguing such, these companies can skirt regulation by the FDA, FTC, and FCC. Kudos to those who have found a way to innovate either by operating within the confines of the current system or breaking out of it. Decisions made by those far away from the frontlines who lack an understanding of how things really work. Protocolization and pointless policies that drag high achievers and those with the audacity to question "the way we've always done it" toward mediocrity. Pre-authorization requests and treatment denials. More meetings and administrative hoops to jump through. Working hard to become efficient and drive value only to have one roadblock after another thrown in your way is one of the most frustrating and burn-out-inducing parts of the current system. Obfuscation and threats (veiled or otherwise) rule the day to the point that it's fair to ask whether those who publicly champion efficiency and value are simply being dishonest.
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Incumbent after incumbent whose fear of losing control leads them to squelch anything that looks like a threat.
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There are too many mechanisms in healthcare consistently trying to force innovators and big thinkers back into line.
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VBC has largely been a blunt, unsophisticated instrument rewarding those who figure out how to play the game, not change it.Ī better approach would be to seek out, elevate, and learn from those who achieve great outcomes and high patient satisfaction in a cost-effective manner - especially those who do so without carrots and sticks. Value-based care, in its past and present iterations, too often makes those who do things better victims of their own success. In medicine, we need to demonstrate a consistent pattern of rewarding the person who does things better." "In other professions, when people break the rules and bring greater economic efficiency and value, we reward them.
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