Our Digital Health Lead, Adam Schultheis, has a passion for patient engagement. While at Epic Systems, Adam spent his time focused on how Epic's Patient Portals could be used to improve patient engagement and patient outcomes.
Internally, Adam created Epic's first released dashboard for patient engagement, led the Patient Engagement Feature Adoption Workgroup, and was the MyChart Lead dedicated to ensuring that patients were able to send healthcare data from 3rd party applications via HL7 FHIR integrations. Externally, Adam assisted while a large Destination Medical Center (DMC) lay the foundation for their trailblazing Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) solutions.
With Incisive Consultants, Adam focuses on partnering with healthcare organizations to achieve their digital health goals. He is always looking for innovative new ways to partner with our clients to enable them to provide better remote or home-based care to their patients
Cara Hodgson, our VP of Talent, recently sat down with Adam to get his thoughts on Digital Health.
Cara Hodgson: Why is Digital Health for patients so important right now?
Adam Schultheis: The pandemic boosted the utilization of telehealth to be able to treat patients at home and free up beds for more severe cases. Due to this boom, patients now expect to get more care through their computers and smart phones. Digital health strategies are necessary to identify the value-add needs of an organization's patient population and develop programs to meet those needs in a cost-effective way.
CH: What should Health systems be focusing on?
AS: Intuitive workflows for the patients are the number 1 priority. If a patient tries to do something through the portal and it ends with a message to call, then the patient is likely not going to try that workflow again for some time. If a patient can’t operate their monitoring devices, or it takes multiple days for them to get the hang of things, then patient dissatisfaction rises, and they may try to opt out of the program. Ease of use for the patient population must be focus when developing these strategies.
A few key items that have a major impact on patient experience are – easy online scheduling, pay transparency through patient-initiated estimates and pay as guest features, and organized messaging for quick responses to patient questions.
CH: What makes you most excited about the future of Health IT?
AS: The ever-changing landscape. Health IT moves incredibly fast, and patients expect more and more to be at their fingertips. I get excited when new, innovative programs go-live and we see the value to patient care almost immediately. Helping organizations create those programs at their own systems is incredibly rewarding.
CH: Where can we most positively impact the patient experience with technology?
AS: Eliminating redundancy for patients and clinicians is a great way technology can impact the patient experience. With seamless integration into the workflows and interfaces that the users are familiar with. Even outside of healthcare, I get a little frustrated when I have to jump to different websites, apps, etc. to accomplish the outcome I want – I am sure clinicians, healthcare administrators, and patients have similar feelings.
CH: What are some of the benefits of remote patient monitoring?
AS: Aside from allowing the patient to get great healthcare from the comfort of their own home, it also helps save costs within the health system itself. Additionally, it lowers the risk of contracting other diseases or getting infected for the patient involved by removing them from the hospital bed. It’s beneficial across the board!
CH: Why should our clients partner with Incisive for Digital Health needs?
AS: Our experience working in this space is a big reason, but additionally, we don’t just want to come in and turn on features and let our clients figure out the rest. We want to partner to identify pain points, functionality gaps, and unnecessary overhead that can be removed all while providing suggestions on long-term strategy. We also can consult on the full scope of the programs – operational/administrative needs, training, device management, EHR build, web service integrations, the patient experience, and more.
CH: What do enjoy doing outside of work?
AS: I enjoy working in the yard, playing golf and basketball, exercising, going out for a great meal, and spending quality time with friends and family.
CH: What are you watching, listening to, or reading right now?
AS: I have been re-reading all the Harry Potter books recently. Something I like to do when I find I haven’t read in a while to get back into the routine. Very nostalgic for me as they were some of the first books I ever read that weren’t assigned to me in school.
Connect with Adam on LinkedIn to learn more about trends within Digital Health and Incisive's Digital Health offerings.
Learn more about Incisive's Digital Health Services by clicking here.
You May Also Like
.png)
