The Ankota Healthcare Delivery Management Blog

Nursing and Home Care are the key to the Future of Healthcare

  

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When people ask me what health care reform should be, I explain that the key is to focus on the most expensive patients (many of whom are elderly people with multiple chronic diseases) and to have care management nurses who coordinate and navigate their care.  I believe that this will reduce the cost of health care by many billions of dollars per year while creating jobs.  It's a true win for all parties, especially the patients.  Today's post was inspired by an article in Healthcare Finance News that shares the same view.

Their article is entitled "Nurses have more opportunities under healthcare reform" by Stephanie Bouchard.  Here are a few of the interesting points:

• Nurse navigators and care coordinators are becoming an integral part of the coordinated care models healthcare reform supporters are saying will improve quality of care and keep healthcare costs down
• "[Nurses] have knowledge of disease processes and treatment, but they also understand and are really schooled in theoretical foundations of human behavior. Why people would comply or not comply based on their health beliefs" per Catherine Garner, PhD, RN, dean of health sciences and nursing at American Sentinel University
• As healthcare facilities transform themselves into coordinated care models, nursing directors are increasingly finding themselves in expanding leadership roles

Go nurses!!!  If your organization is attempteing to pioneer new models of care coordination and you need help automating the delivery process, let us know if we can help - that's what Ankota is all about!