The Pandemic of Blocked Surgical Care
Brad Bichey MD MPH
CEO Nemedic, Inc.
Redefining the Surgical Pathway: Using Responsible AI to Improve Equity, Access, and Efficiency
The widespread fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a seismic shift in healthcare delivery. While the viral pandemic is over, we now are faced with a pandemic of a different nature. Blocked surgical care is the new pandemic as levels of elective surgery are still not back to 2018/19 levels in many specialties. Surgeons are retiring, surgical nurses are leaving, and most hospitals are seeing declining revenue from one of their key revenue sources – elective surgeries.
“More than 600 rural U.S. hospitals are at risk of closing due to their financial instability — that’s more than 30% of the country’s rural hospitals. For half of these 600 hospitals, the risk of closure is immediate, according to a new report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR).
“https://medcitynews.com/2023/07/rural-hospital-insurance-finance
We now face a significant burden on the U.S. healthcare system, creating an issue affecting patients’ access and stakeholders’ economic interests. With the aftermath of the pandemic and the emergence of a 2-5 year healthcare recession, the outlook for restoring surgical access is dire unless we immediately introduce innovative solutions. To address this critical challenge, it’s time to leverage responsible AI and software solutions that make sense in this new era. As part of our patent-pending technology, we incorporate these technologies into a new procedure pathway built on software as a service (SaaS). Our solution fully optimizes patient journeys into procedural care and introduces a new era of health equity and access to innovation.
Step 1. Focus On Individual Patient Needs: The Transformative Power of Patient Prequalification
One of the most transformative aspects of our new procedure pathway is the capability to prequalify patients before scheduling. This means leveraging data science to assess patients’ readiness for procedures based on an array of factors such as medical history, lifestyle, and current health status. This preemptive approach ensures patients receive personalized care, and only those genuinely prepared for surgical interventions are scheduled.
Prequalification enhances healthcare equity as it focuses on individual patient needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. It also streamlines workflow and optimizing resources. By minimizing wasted time and the potential for last-minute cancellations, postponements, and medical management our procedure pathway better utilizes the scarce resources of the surgeon… their time.
Step 2. Reduce Practice Burnout and Improve Efficiency: The Power of Schedule Stacking in Procedural Care
With this new procedure pathway, we also introduce Schedule Stacking – an innovative system that aligns procedural care with the realities of medical management. This process leverages machine learning to organize and optimize the sequence of surgical procedures being added as first appointments. It considers variables such as the complexity of the procedure, opportunity costs, surgeon’s availability, and the patient’s overall readiness.
Schedule Stacking efficiently allocates scarce resources, mitigating the impact of blocked surgical throughput. It enables healthcare providers to serve more critical patients while also realizing a less hectic schedule. We design the schedule to decrease practice burnout and hassle while also increasing procedural volume for surgeons and the medical device companies they partner with. This results in a balanced, efficient surgical marketplace that meets patients’ needs and safeguards the interests of all stakeholders.
Step 3. Boost Health Equity by Reducing Time-to-Treat: The Power of Digital Intelligence in Surgical Scheduling
A key principle underpinning our SaaS solution is reducing the time-to-treat. In many cases, the waiting period between the decision for a surgical intervention and the actual procedure is unnecessarily long, causing undue stress and potentially worsening health outcomes. By using digital intelligence, humans-in-the-loop, and smart scheduling, we reduce this time significantly.
Reducing Time-to-Treat…The result? Surgeons can treat patients more promptly, thus increasing their procedural volume and enhancing patients’ overall experience, outcomes, and access to innovation. Decreasing time-to-treat is also a step towards better health equity, ensuring patients from all backgrounds have a quicker, better entry to the surgical care they need.
From Uncertainty to Innovation: Join Nemedic in Transforming Surgery
In the wake of a global pandemic and amidst a stagnant healthcare recession, it has become critical, now more than ever, to adopt transformative, patient-centric solutions that create pioneering procedure pathways. At Nemedic, this isn’t just a leap in technological advancement; it’s a promise to revolutionize the very foundation of our healthcare system, crafting a new normal that is fair, efficient, and accessible.
If you are a surgeon or a decision-maker in the healthcare industry, let’s address this era of uncertainty and contraction together. Let’s replace stress with innovation, collaboration, and progress. Join us in a partnership that has already led to over 10,000 surgical patients finding cutting-edge technology, procedures, and surgeons. We are dedicated to expanding our partnerships, driven by our commitment to providing exceptional access, innovation, and equity to the patients and surgeons we serve.
You hold the key to transforming healthcare. Make the choice today to join us in this journey towards a brighter, healthier, and equitable future. Sign up for our groundbreaking software now. Together, we can create a new standard in surgical healthcare delivery.
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