High-Quality Data Essential to Achieving Whole-Person Patient Care

 During the second annual Payer and Provider Virtual Summit, experts emphasize the role of high-quality data to achieve whole-person care. 

Whole person care is the concept that the best way to treat patients is to look at their full spectrum of needs, including medical, behavioral, and socioeconomic. According to specialists, whole-person care is essential to improving the overall health of patients. 

“Individuals, and patients particularly, come to us as whole people. We have a responsibility to address the whole person. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s one solution, or one person has to do it all — but more to make sure that we’re not ignoring the external factors, that may impact someone’s overall health outcomes,” said Katherine Suberlak, Vice President of Clinical Service at Oak Street Health. 

While whole person care can significantly improve the overall health of individuals, providers are presented with challenges regarding data. According to Optum Labs Medical Director of Enterprise Data Strategy and Data Science Jeff Hertzberg, MD, MS, whole-person care requires all current and future conditions as well as social and psychological concerns to be addressed.  

To accomplish the goal of whole-person care, providers need data from various sources that must be integrated into electronic health records with machine learning and artificial intelligence. 

“Our patients don’t get all their care from just one set of one provider, one provider organization. They’re getting care from all kinds of other sources,.” added Jay Sultan, Vice President of Healthcare Strategy at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. 

“When we talk about bringing data together from everywhere a patient goes, there are immediate challenges that come up. One of them is figuring out where all these places are. Who do you need to go get the data from? How do you know where to follow, and how to follow that patient?” 

Despite challenges, providers support whole-person care with the philosophy that it is patient-centered. 

“We implement activities that push for the patient-centered philosophy by having the patient be a co-author in what we design as their care plan. And that care plan is designed and informed by the health risk screening that they are the reporter on,” Suberlak said. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing a suspension of in-person care in many areas, the healthcare industry saw a huge boost in telemedicine and telehealth, impacting electronic data collection. 

According to Herzberg, the telehealth trend is one that was on the horizon, but the pandemic accelerated the technology. However, more convenient medicine efforts are not without risk.  

“There are going to be terrible apps, and there’s already terrible information on the internet,” Hertzberg continued.  

“However, there are tremendous opportunities for good providers, good health systems, and good adjuncts to improve accessibility through technology. Patients are not going to want to wait online to get on hold. Tell how many people, their personal medical problem, before they can get in front of the doctor. They want to do it in an app.” 

Additionally, telehealth and telemedicine practices can provide a positive impact at the service level. Based on the information provided by the patient, providers can sort simple problems from the complex, from the emergencies, and give people the time they need to speak with physicians. 

As the quality of data continues to improve, providers predict it will drive clinical decisions. 

“We will increasingly see more decisions of patients, more decisions of clinicians, being driven by better access to data, that is bringing together data from multiple sources, and using it in a more whole person way,” Sultan said.