6 Degrees of Health Care Separation: How Pharma Needs to Close the Gap

Today's blog post comes from Jonathan Bush, CEO, athenahealth. He will be a keynote presenter at ePharma Summit on Tuesday, February 11.6 Degrees of Health Care Separation: How Pharma Needs to Close the Gap You’re probably familiar with the concept of six degrees of separation, where everyone in the world is six or fewer connections from any other person. While that’s a fascinating construct, I believe health care delivery is plagued by it. Here’s what I mean: Six steps to make a connection isn’t bad if you’re linking a tuk-tuk driver in Bangkok to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But it better take a lot fewer than six steps for a physician to access a necessary resource. Unfortunately, the separation between that doctor and the end goal is expanding. And that’s inexcusable. In the business of health care, where connectivity is king, the idea of redundant steps to coordinate care—or simply to get the information needed—can be fatal. For business and, potentially, even for patients. A wide variety of demands in health care has brought a deluge of increased complexity into the already-confusing mix: New government regulations, shifting reimbursement models, pricing pressures and cost controls, an overburdened provider population… all of these have widened the separation between pharma, prescribers, and patients. And an increasing number of acronyms (ACO, ACA, FFS, MCO, PCMH) is creating a barrier between pharma and a healthy revenue stream. So what h...
Source: ePharma Summit - Category: Medical Marketing and PR Tags: ePharma ePharma Summit Health Management Healthcare connectivity patient adherence Source Type: blogs