Patient rights, health tech prominent in new year

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/12/2019 (2332 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canadian health care is on the cusp of significant change. Several initiatives, both planned and proposed, will have a profound effect on how health care is delivered in Canada and across the individual provinces in the coming years.

The big-picture challenges facing our health system continue. Long wait times, controlling costs, lack of care co-ordination and fragmented care are among the main issues. Inappropriate medication duplication, an ongoing opioid crisis, the rise in chronic disease and the aging baby boomer cohort round out the list.

Each year, I look back, and peek forward to see what the next year may hold for health care in Canada — and make a few predictions along the way:

Patient engagement: Patient-centred care is a movement focused on treating patients with dignity, including them in goal-setting and decision-making, and ensuring proper co-ordination of their care. We will see a continued focus on increasing the capabilities of patient engagement tools, including personal health records, patient portals and remote patient monitoring (RPM). RPM enables patients to play a more active role in managing their personal health and chronic diseases, resulting in improved outcomes.

Increased patient access to data: In 2020, we’re likely to see a more cohesive lobby for an official patient bill of digital rights. This should both improve access by patients to their data and restrict the rights of other groups to access patient data inappropriately. Many jurisdictions have introduced patient ombudsmen and advisory councils to their electronic health governance processes — a very positive step.

Patients are becoming increasingly eager to see all the information that their health-care providers see. In the United States, there’s been a significant move toward “open notes,” whereby a patient has full access to everything the physician and other providers have written, without limitation. Expect this thinking to emerge in Canada in 2020.

Helping physicians make sense of it all: Ensuring patients receive the highest quality of care in a digital world means giving physicians the data they need in a timely fashion. Despite waves of digital transformation underway, it’s still not easy for clinicians to find the data they need.

Clinician burnout is a significant problem across North America, and the evidence increasingly points to the clerical burden introduced by the electronic health record (EHR) as a major cause for that burnout.

In 2020 and beyond, the Canadian health-care system will see a greater focus on presenting meaningful data to clinicians. Smart searches, analytics and predictive modelling can significantly help the move from “big data” to “actionable data” that will lead to more effective, efficient care.

Artificial intelligence moves into care: We cannot discuss the future of Canadian health care without addressing the role of AI. Going forward, AI, machine learning and deep learning will help predict all manner of adverse events that today are left to physician intuition and judgment. It has already had major impact and benefits in cases such as predicting surgical outcomes, adverse events such as sepsis, and determining optimal staffing levels in emergency departments.

Measuring and delivering value: As health-care providers struggle with an ever-aging population and increased chronic disease, the sustainability of health-care systems will hinge on the ability to deliver value for taxpayer money. New models are evolving that reward providers for working in teams, and for improving the quality of care they deliver to the population — examples include the Primary Care Network in Alberta and Ontario Health Teams. While these efforts are still at an early stage, it’s reasonable to expect that cost pressures and related forces will cause the model to expand rapidly across Canada.

Moving care into the community: Provincial governments are increasing their spending and focus on the huge range and diversity of care offered in the community, including primary care and community clinics, with the aim of reducing the rate of hospital admissions. Expect to see an emphasis on better managing patient transitions in care from hospital to community and in preventing readmissions as obvious areas for improvement.

Canada saw progress in 2019. Many of the building blocks for health-care transformation already exist, and now it’s a case of embracing them. The next decade heralds some fundamental changes to our health-care system. If we are to maintain a sustainable health-care system, it’s critical that we support physicians and empower patients to participate in their own care.

Chris Hobson is a former family physician with 16 years of experience and two decades as the chief medical officer at Orion Health, a global provider of health information technology.