Patient First Approach To Healthcare

Healthcare until now has largely been a doctor centric approach. Patients have been instructed on to what to do about their health concerns. What medicines to take, what diet plan to follow, which is the best doctors for them, whether they should go in for a surgery or not or which course of investigation best suits them. The point has been that patients are meant to follow what the doctor says without challenging them with self-health awareness or seeking an opinion from another provider.

As a result, we have witnessed an unquestioned rise in the prices of medical care and the gap in the distribution of quality healthcare.  Despite varied attempts at finding solutions to these problems, a doctor to patient model of information has been the understood norm. But with the rising popularity of e-health, the access to healthcare and medical knowledge has been on the rise like never before. Not only can one read and be better informed about a medical condition by themselves with the use of technology, information on investigations, procedures practiced around, other providers available and the infrastructure equipped with them upgrades the position of a patient from a sick, panic stricken individual to an empowered individual who can not only better inform a new provider with his medical problem but also seek more opinions using online medical consultations or online doctor consultation. With live doctors advice coming in, the answers are quick and easy to get. This is being enabled by e-platforms like Medical Second Opinion (MSO), which have the top doctors on their panel giving out consultations online within 24 hours.

E-health which is evolving the landscape of healthcare delivery world over is seeing the change come over in India as well. The consumer oriented model of healthcare is facing trouble from technology that enables and transfers the power of decision making to the hands of the patients by informing and engaging them.

Until now, the sole ownership of health records of any patients was understood as the responsibility of the hospital. This onus is now being shared with patients with the result of technology. Online health records management offered by MSO equips its users with an online cloud space to store their medical data on its account, gives an access to the users anytime from anywhere. This saves the people from wasting time with doctors inferring a medical history during the time of illness and also save the cost of duplication of tests that they have already done but do not have a hard copy of.

The de facto idea remains maximizing value for the patients- where value is defined as the health outcomes achieved that matter to patients relative to the cost of achieving those outcomes. This can be done by facilitating them with the least time, cost and effort. Internet and smart phones enable this paradigm shift as by connecting directly with the holder of the technology instantly allowing them to research medical conditions, symptoms, doctors availability, accessing them among more at the click of a button.

An engaged and aware patient reduces the burden on healthcare infrastructure by knowing exactly what they want and how to go about with it. This helps accommodate more patients into the system solving the crisis of lack of quality healthcare.