Electronic health care: A new method of service delivery

Ankush Gupta

In a fiercely competitive and technology driven market place, health organizations are looking forward to applying e-strategies for extending their services beyond the geographical boundaries and enhancing revenue generation through increasing their patient base. A number of health care organizations have either hosted or are developing web-based model for their services. These models are mainly focused at providing information regarding their service offerings to health care consumers. However, success of electronic health care too depends largely on aggressive electronic business planning, quick implementation and continuous upgradation.

DEVELOPING A ELECTRONIC HEALTH CARE PLAN
Mission Statement: The business plan shall consist of a statement clearly stating the purpose of providing electronic health care. The purpose can be providing health care beyond the geographical boundaries with the input of resources that are available or either can be acquired.

Objectives: Short-term objectives of providing electronic health care can be:

• To make the customer aware of services provided.
• Coping with competition ,
• To keep pace with technology and to utilize latest technology in patient care.
• To serve the existing customers better.
• To increase the clientele

Long-term objectives can be:

• Enhancing Brand by adding brand traits like technology driven organization.
• Providing service to consumers round the clock without the constraints of geographical reach.

Assessment: Before actual delivery of electronic health care to market, a through assessment has to be done for:

• Continuum at which healthcare delivery has to be done. (Is it only the consultation by Physicians through Internet, Video conferencing with patients and their consultants)
• Required IT Infrastructure (Number of available PC’s, availability of telephone lines, quality of data transmission cables networking facilities, capacity of the server).
• Financial consideration (Amount of capital asset investment, operational fund required, return on investment from e-health care.)
• Staff (Availability of existing manpower, number of personnel required)
• Technical knowledge of staff (Knowledge and experience in developing, hosting and maintaining web site, skill set in most modern programming languages and data transmission).

Any discrepancy in the capabilities of the organization to provide electronic health care can lead to disastrous failure in effectiveness of implementation of the plan. Through assessment on all the dimensions is not easy and it can take a lot of soul searching for any type of health care organization before entering in e health care business.

E-HEALTH BUSINESS OFFER
Components of the offer: The offering on web site can include high credible health information (Updated regularly), pre-registration for in patient procedures, appointment request with consultants, queries regarding minor health problems, on line consultations and video conferencing.

Targeted Audience: Targeted audience in case of healthcare can be small hospitals (through networking), Internet users and private consultants.

Promotion: Web address can be printed on all types of stationary, Brochures, pamphlets, leaflets, envelopes and letter heads. Reciprocal links with web sites of other health care and managed care organizations can be developed.

ROI ON ELECTRONIC HEALTH CARE BUSINESS
Situation in health care market is complex, as secondary and tertiary care cannot be delivered through electronic media vehicles. May it is video conferencing, consultation with doctors (first or second opinion), helping other doctors to operate by giving instruction, the role of electronic vehicles is limited more to giving advice. The delivery of health needs humans and this is the biggest limitation in electronic health care. Any health car organization should thoroughly investigate the ROI (Return on investment) before actually investing funds into electronic health care. ROI on investment can be quantifiable to certain extent but it has non-quantifiable parameters also.

To determine ROI, organization has to develop a model ROI assessment plan taking into consideration:

• Planned operational procedures and their execution so as to take into consideration the operational cost that can be incurred in delivery of service.
• Collection of data that can suggest the volume of consumers that are marked as potential clientele of electronic health care and also device methods where number of visitors to the site can be identified through a registration program. These registered visitors can be send reminders to build on clientele for electronic health care as well as in campus health care.
• Identification of methods to measure Quantifiable benefits and Non Quantifiable benefits.

Components of Quantifiable ROI: Quantifiable ROI can result due to:

Online Transactions: Online transactions can be done with third party payers, Insurance Companies and HMOs. This facility can increase the number of patients from these agencies. Data driven analysis can identify the amount of revenue received online.

Advertising: Banners can be run on web site regarding health plans and insurance services on the web site of the organization for a fixed contractual revenue per year leading to a huge amount of revenue generation.

Sponsorship: Companies producing nutritional food health items for primitive, preventive and restorative health care can be encouraged to use web site for promoting their products and in turn they can be asked to sponsor the maintenance and upgradation of the web site. For example Astra Zeneca has a sponsorship agreement with Cleveland Clinic for gastrointestinal disease.

New Patients Registered: Number of new patients who registered online and who do not live in the physical clientele zone of hospital can be treated as a new case and a fixed percentage of their bill can be attributed to Online Services.

Revenue generated through e-mail medical advice: The fee that an organization plans to charge for online medical consultation or e-mail medical advice should directly be accounted to electronic health care business.

Components of Non Quantifiable ROI: Non Quantifiable ROI can result due to:

• Increase in awareness of the services offered by the organization leads to increase in the utilization by patients there by increasing the clientele as well as revenue of the Hospital.
• Brand trait improvement increasing the brand equity of the Hospital.
• The ability to deliver focused product and message to a specific audience is critical to successful hospital marketing.

Electronic health care will not only improve the quality of medical care to patients but also play an important role for Physicians as well. Hospitals providing electronic health care can develop a forum where doctors can consult and discuss complicate cases and try to develop an effective disease management plan. With the emergence of health insurance sector, Third Party Administrators and Health Maintenance Organizations more and more hospitals will be compelled to use electronic health care for providing their health plans to community because consumer will compare various options available in turbulent market place.

Apart from that tool, techniques and devices utilized can be utilized for recruitment program and vendor chain management there by reducing the cost of paper work and man days-invested in lengthy process. It is always better to be proactive than reactive.

Organizations who have already started exploring opportunities in electronic health care or those who are yet to start should seriously analyse their strategy and modify it to generate some Return on Investment though their electronic component so that they are not left behind in the information technology wave.

(The author is executive-personnel, Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai)