The Importance of Technology in Chronic Care Management in Canada

Technology plays a key role in every single area of healthcare from diagnosis to treatment and is of increasing importance in chronic care management.

Hospitals and clinics continue to modernize facilities and adopt new technologies to ensure patients receive timely and accurate diagnoses, including more specific planned treatment for long-term care management.

Among the most important of these is chronic care management software, already established as the clear next step for better managing the needs, care, and outcomes of patients with chronic conditions — led by best-in-class Complex Care Plan from Coalese Health.

 

A doctor discusses a chronic long-term health care plan with a patient using Complex Care Plan software.

Chronic care management

Patients with chronic care needs require ongoing management and monitoring of symptoms that are associated with their chronic illness(es).

Chronic care management has four main goals, which are to:

  • Identify chronic health conditions early
  • Keep patients out of the hospital
  • Reduce the number of trips to the patient’s doctor
  • Provide patients with the best care that is possible.

Patients’ health and time are irreplaceable. Long-term care patients should not be making unnecessary — or worse — emergency visits to their doctor and/or the hospital.

 

The problems that chronic care management faces

The Canadian healthcare system is struggling with the way that healthcare resources are allocated —  increasingly mismatched with patient needs. Since 2015, there have been more Canadians over 65 than there are under 15. The large number of older adults puts a strain on healthcare systems, and on top of this, 44% of adults over the age of 20 have at least one (out of ten common) chronic condition(s).

The system currently in place is fine-tuned and works well when addressing acute conditions. The problems arise when chronic conditions are putting unnecessary pressure on the system.

Chronic care management needs to address issues from both the medical care supplier and the patient.

For providers of medical care, there is generally insufficient time or resources available to continuously visit the patient to monitor the patient’s progress, adherence to care instructions, and general wellbeing.

The same can be said of patients who might not be able to — and shouldn’t have to — continuously visit their healthcare providers physically just to receive needed chronic care management. Moreover, patients might not be able to understand or remember their care plan well enough to follow it properly by themselves without guidance, and in some cases make their own decisions on the best course of action for themselves.

Chronic conditions also don’t often come alone, which means that the patient’s mortality, hospitalization, and medication interaction risks increase.

 

What the chronic care management model needs

The three elements of a healthcare system that must be integrated to encourage high-quality chronic care management are:

  • healthcare system
  • Self-management support
  • Community resources

They are indispensable and must be improved on continuously to ensure that patients are as well-equipped as possible to manage their symptoms.

Even with all three elements in place, there are gaps in the current healthcare system that mean a patient cannot access the knowledge or care that they need sometimes. This is where chronic care management software provides a viable solution.

Chronic care management software can help to fill in the gaps that exist in the system.

 

Chronic care management software

Chronic care management software involves creating a care plan that will carefully detail a patient’s:

  • Health concerns
  • Health goals
  • Health providers
  • Medications
  • Community service preferences
  • Data about their health
  • Needed care
  • Information on how to maintain that needed care

Chronic care management software enables the patient and their healthcare provider to discuss and agree on how to sustain the patient’s chronic care management.

The best of chronic care management software is Complex Care Plan.

 

Complex Care Plan

Designed for and by physicians, it focuses on the problems that primary care physicians face when they want to give patients with chronic illnesses the care that they need.

Complex Care Plan helps doctors to provide the enhanced continuity of care that they need to so that patients can enjoy increased engagement and more positive patient outcomes.

It’s a fully automated approach that streamlines what would otherwise be a very time and labor-intensive process. Complex Care Plan:

  • Instantly identifies patients eligible for certain healthcare practices based on their chronic health conditions
  • Notifies all qualified patients daily
  • Provides fully comprehensive and automatically-generated care plans for each patient
  • Enables physicians to spend their time engaging with patients and so give them better care
  • Saves 30+ minutes per patient when it comes to preparing care plans
  • Enables more engaged and in-depth patient conversations
  • Provides care plans that are not only highly personalized, but are easy to understand as well.

On top of these benefits, Complex Care Plan’s predictive analytics provides physicians with actionable data and rich insights. EMR data is made truly useful by applying embedded national guidelines, analytics, and best practices.

Complex Care Plan is a secure, cloud-based service that’s designed to work on any device, operate anywhere with internet access, and be used by everyone in a health care team – all without ever disrupting systems or processes currently in place.

 

A better way to treat patients with chronic illnesses

Technology is the way to improve chronic care management. Chronic care management software helps patients and doctors to stay on the same page, gives patients the support and knowledge that they need to manage their symptoms, and frees doctors’ time up to give their patients better care.

With the right support and tools, healthcare providers can give patients with chronic care the ongoing support and resources that they need in order to achieve the goals and outcomes that they want to.