#Blockchain for HealthCare Equity by Arnab Paul, @iArnabPaul

In our endeavour to promote digital india it should be our collective effort to bring healthcare to the disenfranchised and to the people who slip out of the cracks.

Most of us just don’t bother to take care of the elephant in the room, its time all the stakeholders joined hands and come up with a solution. For me personally Equity is of paramount importance in healthcare.The lack of focus on vulnerable populations in patient safety discounts the significance of the many lives lost, all precious to those who love them. we have yet to place strategic emphasis on the need to protect all. A man’s life lost to medical error then disguised as a heart attack, either intentionally or because of unconscious prejudice about the depth of his pocket, is more than a patient safety event. 

For the millions of people who have been exposed to discrimination based on their spending capacity and limited access to resources and denial of equality in humanity, such an event adds insult to tragic injury.We must connect in ridding our health system of all forms of inequality and ensuring that all people are protected from harm equally.

As hospitals and care systems work to improve quality of care and prepare for coming changes in the health care field, the ability to fully understand their patient populations and communities is critical. Collecting and using ethnicity, language, spending capacity data will help hospitals and care systems understand their patient populations and address health care disparities. While many hospitals are successfully collecting REAL data, fewer are effectively stratifying the data to shed light on health care disparities,

We need to systematically collect REAL preference data on all patients. We need to use REAL data to look for variations in clinical outcomes, resource utilization, length of stay and frequency of readmissions within our hospital. We need to compare patient satisfaction ratings among diverse groups and act on the information. Above all we need to actively use REAL data for strategic and outreach planning for the underprivileged.

Patient satisfaction is not a clearly defined concept, although it is identified as an important quality outcome indicator to measure success of the services delivery system

There is no clear consensus between the literatures on how to define the concept of patient satisfaction in healthcare.

For everything in life we need some kind of metrics, some tools to measure the clinical outcome and the patient satisfaction. So to make up for it may I suggest we incorporate Tech enabled, Blockchain optimized patient feedback mechanism.

So what is the solution, how do we propose to go about it, well unlike Press Ganey & HCAHPS (the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), Press Ganey has stated that a minimum of 30 survey responses is necessary to draw meaningful conclusions from the data it receives and that it will not stand behind statistical analysis when less than 30 responses are received. 

If we all incorporate a blockchain Ecosystem & go truly real time in the patient feedback mechanism it would greatly enhance the whole patient experience and maybe help to manage solve some of the issues in real time. Wouldn’t it be just great if we incorporate Blockchain in the patient feedback loop, we wouldn’t have to wait for 30 odd surveys to be analyzed we could just go ahead and fix the situation right away if it warrants an action.

One study estimates, in US alone missed appointments cost US healthcare providers up to $150 billion a year.There have been instances that a Clinic loses money because of No Showand missed appointments.Patients not showing up can be costly to the health-care system. Offices lose out on revenue, and delaying care can lead to more expensive treatments later on.

Allscripts, Lyft and few other companies have joined hands to address this problem. The companies said they hope working together will reduce the number of people who miss medical appointments because of transportation issues.

But interesting it was found in another study giving poor people free use of ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft for doctor appointments doesn’t make them any less likely to become no-shows than patients who have to find their own way there, a U.S. study suggests.

So what are we missing here, I believe incentivising ( tokens ) is the key and Blockchain could play a major role. Blockchain in itself is not a panacea for all things healthcare but it certainly holds the key to transform the current healthcare service delivery mechanism and make it more transparent and efficient.

Ehealth or no ehealth, if its not able to solve the issues of equity & empathy than its no value prop only noise, maybe it would help become a excellent facilitator in healthcare delivery but it sadly would not be able to solve the core issue of equity and empathy.

The concluding part follows:

How Blockchain could be a gamechanger for healthcare