Newly-Released Playbook Provides Framework, Specific Actions to Transform Healthcare Delivery to High-Need Patients
Leaders from Multiple Healthcare Sectors Advocate for Patient-Centered Approach to Increasing Quality and Efficiency of Care
WASHINGTON – As recognition has grown that community, employment, and other factors play a significant role in the condition of one’s health, leaders in the health industry have collaborated to identify areas in which legislative and regulatory action will enable targeted, effective care specifically to high-need patients, those individuals with multiple chronic conditions who account for a significant share of the nation’s health spending. The comprehensive set of solutions illustrates how deeply intertwined social determinants and healthcare outcomes are, and the impact that can be achieved by addressing the former.
The framework is presented in Optimizing Healthcare for High-Need Patients: A Playbook, released by the Healthcare Leadership Council, a coalition of chief executives representing all sectors of American healthcare. The publication represents the unified views of hospitals, academic health centers, health plans, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, laboratories, biotech firms, health product distributors, post-acute care providers, home care providers and information technology companies.
The recommendations emphasize overarching priorities to achieve a highly functioning healthcare ecosystem, both in and out of institutional settings. These include improved access to care, including preventive, primary care and specialized; ensuring an adequate healthcare workforce; and optimizing care through communities, telehealth, and additional methods of reaching patients where they are, while aligning regulations and incentives to propel progress forward.
“There are a multitude of ways in which the private and public sectors can work together to ensure the focus is on the patient across the comprehensive continuum of care,” said Mary R. Grealy, president of the Healthcare Leadership Council. “In gathering meaningful data on high-need patients outside of the doctor’s office, we are empowered to meet them where they are and change their health outcomes for the better. The government has an important role to play in opening up pathways to delivering the care that patients want and need.”
