Darryl Gibbings-Isaac, MD, Senior Manager at Accenture

Patient Engagement

DHW Q&A: Humanizing Healthcare With Accenture

With Darryl Gibbings-Isaac, MD
Accenture, Senior Manager – Strategy

Consumer expectations are rising for healthcare experiences, and technology is playing a key role in meeting the demand for convenient and accessible care.

In this Digital Health Wire Q&A we sat down with Accenture’s Darryl Gibbings-Isaac, MD, to discuss the future of digital health and the importance of keeping patients at the center of the conversation.

The US healthcare system is under a lot of pressure from an aging population and a shortage of healthcare workers. What does it take to ease this burden and where does technology fit into the picture?

Technology has to play a role in augmenting what humans can do. Traditionally, healthcare has been a very human-centric system. Technology is going to be important in lowering the cost-to-serve, which will help increase access, by augmenting what clinicians can do. It will also help with healthcare worker burnout by offloading more tasks.

Technology’s relationship with humans is going to be the key thing. We’re talking about augmenting clinicians, not substituting clinicians. The conversation isn’t about doing more with less. 

We can also use technology to augment humans on the patient side. The question is about how we can enable patients to take care of themselves in situations where that’s appropriate. As an example we already see this with different symptom checkers, which help provide a guided, structured way to reach the best care.

What are some of the tools that you believe show the most promise in augmenting patients?

There are a lot of tools that take into account behavior change and behavioral science techniques to really go beyond the nudge and actually put a message in context of that patient and their daily lives. This enables a better response from that patient and allows them to manage their care in a better way. 

There’s also the data coming in. We’ve seen wearables on the consumer level where health information can be fed to patients outside of a clinical interaction and they can see if there’s something they need to do about it. As long as you pair the data with a simple and easy to understand action, that is cognizant of behavior change, you can have an effective result.

The other realm is virtual health, which enables more of the diagnosis to happen on the patient side. One way this happens is to empower patients with remote examination devices. The other way involves the “care anywhere” model and guiding patients through retail-based settings where they can get blood draws, or even imaging. Having more data generated on the patient side allows clinicians to make a decision fairly quickly when they actually see it.

Do you think we’re going to continue seeing a shift to remote care and a hospital-at-home setting?

We definitely believe that shift is going to happen for a number of reasons. The first is around experience. We’ve seen during the pandemic that experience matters and that convenience matters. We believe the tools that can bring care to where the patient is are going to be quite successful.

You also have to look at the model for centralized care, where you absolutely have to have specialized resources, and the hospital will still make sense. However, that’s the most expensive form of care in the way that it’s configured, and in a world where we need to reduce the cost of care to improve access and keep up with demand, we’ll almost have no choice but to configure other spaces to meet those same needs.

Accenture recently released a Patient Experience Survey where you found that two thirds of consumers have had a poor patient experience with a provider. How can providers improve the patient experience to meet rising expectations?

Consumers have liquid expectations from their other experiences outside of healthcare, and in order for providers to keep up with those, I think they have to understand a couple of things.

One is that experience matters, and we’re seeing that shift more and more. But it’s not just understanding that experience matters, it’s understanding which experiences matter, and asking “what are the moments that matter most to the patient.”

When we’re talking about providers, we’re not just talking about clinicians, but also the whole organization that’s managing the experience. It’s not a one-and-done situation, but something that needs continuous monitoring, so metrics are needed on the other side of it.

You have to measure consumer experience levels to have a foundation for improvement. If you recognize that the levels are going down, you need to understand why they’re going down to make adjustments.

What are Accenture’s current top priorities in the healthcare industry?

Improving the consumer experience is definitely one of them. We’re often using human-centered design to solve these problems, and placing the patient at the center of the solutions. We’re also looking at how you can unbundle care and the components around it to create a location agnostic care model. 

The first part of the equation is more design-centric, while the other side of the equation is more operation-centric. I think you need to be able to do both of these things, as a health system, to really be at the top level in today’s world.

What are the biggest challenges when focusing on human-centered design and changing healthcare?

There have been many different approaches to changing healthcare, each with varying degrees of success. We’ve seen entities come from outside of healthcare and try to disrupt it. Changing healthcare from the outside is a tall order.

Where we’ve seen this be most successful is with true partnerships that are not only inspired by the health system, but also instigated by it. Both sides have to want change before an outside partner can come in and reimagine how care is delivered.

We also need to keep putting the patient at the center of these conversations, and I’d go even further and say that we need to put humans at the center, because it’s not going to work just designing for the consumer. You have to design for everyone within the ecosystem.

The Wire

• Right On Cue: Diagnostic equipment company Cue recently IPO’d on the Nasdaq, raising $200m and dashing the hopes of any healthcare founders planning on claiming the ticker symbol HLTH. Cue was founded in 2010 with the goal of developing an at-home flu test, but found major success last year after its portable COVID-19 test was approved by the FDA, leading to a $481m contract with the Department of Defense. The company plans to use the IPO proceeds to expand its testing capabilities and production capacity.

• FDA Transparency: In a move to increase regulatory transparency, the FDA recently published a database of all AI and machine learning-enabled medical devices. The publicly available list includes 343 products approved since 1997. Although the FDA was the body that approved the devices, it mentions that it compiled the list from sources such as Nature and The Medical Futurist, and will only update it on a periodic basis.

• Ransomware Impact: A survey of 597 healthcare IT professionals from the Ponemon Institute found that healthcare system ransomware attacks are leading to increased mortality rates, with 25% of respondents reporting an increase in patient deaths following an attack. Over the past two years, 67% of health delivery organizations experienced a ransomware attack, driven in part by the growing number of third parties contractors with access to sensitive information (up 30% annually). Ransomware is typically discussed in terms of economic impact, but these findings indicate that mortality also needs to be a part of the conversation.

• Meru Health Series B: Digital mental health is continuing to attract investment at a blazing pace, with Meru Health securing $38m in a recent Series B round ($51m total funding). Meru offers a 12-week virtual therapy program that addresses depression and anxiety, as well as holistic treatments for interconnected issues such as nutrition and sleep. The company will use the funds to expand access to its new coaching solution intended to help people with early signs of depression and burnout before the symptoms worsen.

• Rush the Dispatch: Rush University System for Health and in-home care provider DispatchHealth recently partnered to bring high-acuity care to the Chicago area. The partnership is focused on expanding care delivery options for patients who often struggle with access to services. Rush patients will now be able to request on-site DispatchHealth medical teams equipped with diagnostics and treatments, which will help the health system deliver a better patient experience while reducing readmissions.

• Telehealth Disparities: New research in JAMA Ophthalmology studied claims data for 1,911 ophthalmologic patients collected during 2020, finding that disparities in telehealth care delivery existed during the onset of the pandemic. Factors associated with decreased telehealth usage included male sex (OR 0.86), Black race (OR 0.69), not speaking English (OR 0.63), and an educational level of high school or less (OR 0.83). The researchers conclude that understanding the causes of these disparities might help those who need access to virtual care.

• ivermectin Trends: New Komodo Health analysis leveraged the company’s Healthcare Map (database of de-identified patient data tracking US healthcare journeys) to investigate ivermectin usage between January 2019 and May 2021, finding that prescription rates have increased 70% following a post-pandemic surge. Despite the medication being used primarily for veterinary and dermatological conditions, the specialties with the greatest increase in ivermectin claims were physical rehabilitation and anesthesiology, seeming to imply off-label use of the medicine.

• At-School Care: Pediatric telehealth company DotCom Therapy recently partnered with at-school care provider Goodside Health to improve access to mental health services for schools and children. DotCom’s team of licensed therapists are now available to GSH patients with elevated symptoms of depression and anxiety. The service is provided “at little to no cost to the school district” due to DotCom and GSH identifying resources to cover the care (obtaining grants, ESSER Funds) and advocating on behalf of schools and families.

• Patient Engagement Study: A new study published in JMIR investigated patient engagement (PE) patterns among 2,129 users of a hypertension self-management app, finding that compliance follow-ups significantly improved PE. Researchers noted that once blood pressure was reduced, patients with low PE tended to stop using the app, resulting in an increase in blood pressure. This may give evidence that controlling BP requires continuous engagement in hypertension self-management.

• Maps Upgrades: Google recently updated its “Search” and “Maps” tools to show more information on healthcare provider profiles, including coverage options and whether language assistance is offered. It will also allow healthcare businesses to manage the information about their practices by adding details related to telemedicine and remote care. Google has recently added several other health features to its core offerings, including Maps tools that help users check how crowded public transit is or find vaccination stations.