Eyes Wide Open: Thoughts on the Health Care Paradigm Shift

This past April, I attended a Newark Regional Business Partnership event entitled “Eye Opener: Moving from Volume to Value Based Healthcare.“ The main speakers included:

• Barry H. Ostrowsky, President and CEO, RWJBarnabas Health
• Catherine T. Doherty, Senior Vice President and Group Executive – Clinical Franchise Solutions and Marketing, Quest Diagnostics
• Allen J. Karp, Senior Vice President – Healthcare Management, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey

As an executive at GoMo Health, where we are focused on patient-centered engagement to improve compliance and outcomes, I was excited to hear from these thought leaders and their innovative approaches to going about the business of treating and engaging with patients and members.

The event was designed to highlight the rapidly increasing innovation in healthcare, with new discoveries producing outcomes that were never possible. The drive towards creating a proactive culture of wellness rather than a reactive one of treating sickness is starting to establish an entirely new framework, resulting in better outcomes, reduced cost of care, and ultimately, a healthier population.

Health Care and Technology: The Good and the Bad

RWJBarnabas Health, HorizonBlueCross and Quest Diagnostics are coming together to in an effort to change their combined healthcare delivery, assessment and financial models. As a part of his presentation, Barry Ostrowsky outlined how the board of directors at RWJBarnabas Health have recognized the need to better engage with the greater New Jersey community. Mr. Ostrowsky explained that this approach is multifaceted, and that as a leading healthcare provider in New Jersey, they have a corporate responsibility to the communities they serve.  Innovation and technology, and the data both produce, provides evidence that to achieve this value-based healthcare model, they need to look beyond treating diseases and start treating people.

Mr. Ostrowsky also discussed the need for technology to be a focus for providers and the importance of understanding how people use technology in their daily lives to positively impact and encourage healthy living and support self-management of medical conditions.

I was happy to hear that our local New Jersey healthcare community is recognizing the opportunity of leveraging technology to support remote care coordination and population health management.  Nationally recognized and award winning as a digital disease management solution, GoMo Health Concierge Care® touches millions of people daily from Kenya, Africa to our own backyard in Bergen County, New Jersey with behaviorally-based concierge-style delivery of personalized resources to support people throughout their healthcare journey.