In a recent episode of Healthcare on Air by Verizon, leaders representing non-traditional and traditional healthcare organizations came together to discuss the need for innovative strategies to better serve the healthcare needs of consumers.
Co-hosted by Verizon’s Global Lead of Innovation and Strategy Robin Goldsmith and Best Buy Health’s Head of Population Health Brian Urban, Innovations in Patient Care focused on how new approaches can address critical issues such as access to care for mental health challenges and chronic disease. The panel featured guests Dr. Chris Mosunic, chief clinical officer of Calm; Sarah Mastrorocco, VP and GM of Instacart Health; and Sameer Kokan, vice president of clinical partnerships at Point32Health, the parent company for Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare and Tufts Health Plan.
Here are a few highlights from the conversation:
Digital storytelling + science = engaging and safe mental health care at scale
WIth the ubiquity of smartphones, mental health care doesn’t need to be limited to the old stereotype of the patient lying on the couch talking with a therapist.
“Phones have become the norm for everybody receiving care in terms of their own self-care or their entertainment,” said Mosunic. “Whether we like it or not, we have a subconscious bias at this point towards being on our phones.”
But delivering dry clinical facts through a mobile app won’t suffice to engage people; storytelling is critical. At the same time, a great story delivered by a chatbot or a popular scientist/influencer could be dangerous. “The problem is quality and safety and efficacy,” said Mosunic, because it’s hard to know if the information they’re delivering is accurate.
To deliver high-quality mental health care at scale, we need to bring together great storytelling with science, he explained. Calm Health does this by developing programs with clinical psychologists that are delivered by natural storytellers, according to Mosunic.
Digital technology can improve access to healthy food and help solve for nutrition security
Just as digital technology can fill gaps in mental health care, it also can help increase access to nutritious food in an affordable way, according to Mastrorocco. For example, as a delivery platform, Instacart can get physical groceries to people who have time, transportation, or mobility challenges. “Over 95% of households live in food deserts,” Mastrorocco said.
But Instacart Health also helps address financial access through partnerships, she explained. The company has partnered with the USDA and retail partners to bring SNAP food stamps online to over 30,000 stores across all 50 states. “What we’ve heard from people is that we’re solving for time and transportation, but also a stigma of using financial assistance and budgeting,” said Mastarocco. “It’s really easy to budget online. It is not easy to put things back at the register. . . there’s some stress there.”
Additionally, Instacart Health is using AI technology to make the online shopping experience “more personal, intuitive and aligned with the customer’s health and lifestyle goals,” she said. The company meets people in their journey and gives them the right information at the right time to make healthy decisions, which is critical for people managing chronic conditions such as diabetes.
Integration of trusted apps is key to improving the consumer experience
These types of meaningful and disruptive innovations can significantly improve the healthcare consumer experience, said Kokan. The challenge for payers is figuring out how to get them out to members at scale, especially when so many new solutions are coming to market.
“We have a lot of point solutions,” Kokan said. “How do we figure out how to make this a streamlined experience for the member and also for our providers? There’s administrative cost inherent in each vendor that we onboard. Those costs either get passed on to members or to employer groups.”
“What we need as payers is a way to really integrate—to really make sure that the experience is relatively seamless,” Kokan stressed. “The member’s not going to 10 different portals to get where they need to.” Companies with trusted brands, such as Verizon, Calm, Best Buy and Instacart, will be the ones to figure out how to integrate with traditional healthcare systems in a meaningful way, he said. “Not only will the member experience be better, costs will come down.”
Best Buy Health, for example, combines remote patient monitoring systems, 5,000 Geek Squad Health Agents trained in medical device technology, and partner ecosystem solutions to provide a powerful platform that supports people in their homes. In this way, the company adds capacity for providers in physical settings without requiring huge infrastructure investments by healthcare systems, Urban explained.
And through a thoughtful vetting process, the company can help bring innovative solutions like Calm Health to people who may not be familiar with it and close “all these huge gaps in a meaningful way.”
Watch the full podcast below.
