How Digital Health should focus on Continuum of Care experience for patients?

Howdy!

Today we are going to talk about patient experience and why digital health strategies should focus on providing a “Continuum of Care” experience to the patients.

Continuum of Care isn’t a new concept but is in existence since long, also known as transitional care and is defined within Wikipedia as,

“Transitional care refers to the coordination and continuity of health care during a movement from one healthcare setting to either another or to home, called care transition, between health care practitioners and settings as their condition and care needs change during the course of a chronic or acute illness.”

Let us review what it means from digital health app standpoint. With implementation of continuum of care strategies digital health apps will enable better health outcomes and overall improvement of care experience both from patient and care givers standpoint. The transition from inpatient to outpatient many a time means the disease is potentially transitioning from acute to chronic, which means more attention is needed to handle chronic conditions. 

Focusing on continuum of care experience ensures following –

• Reduced avoidable readmissions to hospitals 
• Improved outcomes by ensuring timely care
• Improved patient engagement
• Improved caregiver experience
• Care continuity and Accountability
• Patient medication management and follow ups
• Patient education
• Reduced care givers burnout
• Improved education for care givers as well

So, the digital health applications should be designed to support this transition and provide a continuous experience both to providers and patients. 

A typical continuum of care experience in context of transition is elaborated below –