The healthcare industry is moving away from hospital-based cures and treatments to focus on value to patients
Medical costs are skyrocketing because western populations are ageing, the rate of chronic illness is growing, and medical science keeps pushing back the boundaries of what is possible.
The way forward is by making radical changes. This involves re-examining how healthcare is delivered - from prevention to rehabilitation.
Today's economic pressures often mean relegating patients to being a peripheral consideration to processes and prices. Payment is based on the delivery of services, regardless of whether the operation is successful.
Service-based thinking means hospitals are structured around medical specialities, rather than conditions and patients.
This forces the staff to focus on making their department run more quickly and cheaply and shifting costs to others, rather than thinking about the most effective overall path for the patient.
Left as it is, such focus is likely to increase, as budgets get stricter with foreseeable shortages of staff. Both patients and caregivers struggle with a complex, fragmented healthcare system.
The best way to reduce this complexity is by addressing the needs of the healthcare industry from the perspective of patients and their health problems.
Looking across boundaries
The patient's well-being should be the primary concern in healthcare and compensation should be based on a treatment's value to the patient.
People do not want to be in hospital, so value to them means avoiding an admission, leaving hospital earlier, or staying healthier longer. It is by concentrating on this value that we can expand the limits on treatment from just providing hospital-based cures to encompassing the full care cycle.
This enlarges the role of caregivers to include promoting healthier lifestyles, rehabilitating patients fully or, for chronic diseases, managing the condition at home, with support from comprehensive, continual monitoring.
This, in turn, takes better, multidisciplinary diagnoses and a more inclusive approach to treatments - with fewer mistakes or repeated procedures as a welcome side-effect.
The result is better and cheaper cures through earlier diagnosis, fewer disabilities, faster recoveries, or at least slower progression of diseases.
Though it means investing in different ways, concentrating on value to the patient in this way reduces the overall cost of healthcare. The results speak for themselves.
Studies show that CT screening may eliminate 80 per cent of lung cancer deaths in high-risk patients; image-guided stenting can allow brain aneurysm patients to return to normal lives after a month instead of a year, and using fluoroscopy to open clogged kidney arteries can save $15,000 per procedure.
Connecting ideas
The care cycle and patient-focus are critical in simplifying healthcare. Innovation and service orientation are key to this goal. The days of achieving business goals by just selling greater numbers of products are on the way out.
Companies such as Philips Healthcare, which reinvests 12 per cent of its turnover in research and development, are pioneers in this new healthcare scenario.
Philips is responsible for such important industry firsts as non-invasive electronic foetal monitoring, rampable MR from 1.5 to 3T and integrated catheter labs.
Ambient CT is one example of a new way of tackling problems. It applies evidence-based design, the research of clinical psychiatrists and the vast experience of Philips Design.
Ambient CT uses lighting to increase the physical and emotional comfort of the patient. The opportunity to personalise their examination environment gives patients a sense of control, which helps relieve apprehension and thus increase compliance.
This reduces the need for retakes and sedation, which lowers radiation exposure and examination costs and improves workflows and clinical results.
Another example is Protocol Watch in patient monitors. This screens for severe sepsis and guides staff through the accepted protocol for treating it.
Artificial intelligence detects the condition earlier to tackle both infection rates and staff or training shortages. As with Ambient CT, such improved clinical and economic results can be an important competitive advantage for a hospital or clinic.
As long as health care companies continue to adapt and consider the patient experience above the profit margin, the future for long-term value in healthcare looks bright.
Human Development Index
Going beyond income
Each year since 1990 the Human Development Report has published the Human Development Index (HDI) which looks beyond GDP to a broader definition of well-being.
The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrollment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP and income).
What it does provide is a broadened prism for viewing human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being.
According to the 2007-08 Human Development Index issued by the United Nations, the HDI for United Arab Emirates is 0.868, which gives the country a rank of 39 out of 177 countries with data.
The country was ranked 27 in terms of life expectancy. It ranked 39th out of 177 countries based on both public expenditure on health and expenditure per capita.
- Ministry of Health (MOH) and WHO
The writer is Chief Executive Officer, Philips Medical Systems, and a member of the Board of Management
