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The U.S. Congress should consider embracing policies that advance digital health initiatives such as remote patient monitoring and hospital at home.
Without these policies in place, the US health care system will miss opportunities to improve patient care, workforce planning and other key areas.
Several global digital health examples highlight how encouraging digital health could help reduce costs and enhance patient outcomes in the US.
As the challenges of health care affordability, staffing and access continue across the US, the rise of technology presents a significant opportunity to unlock more responsive care that better addresses patients’ health and social needs while alleviating provider burden and reducing costs.
Washington Council Ernst & Young (WCEY) is a tax, legislative and regulatory group within Ernst & Young LLP that combines the power of a leading professional services organization with the on-the-ground knowledge, personal relationships and attention to detail of a boutique Washington-insider firm.
Our Healthy at Home methodology helps health care organizations design and seamlessly integrate new models of care, product suites and business models.
The question is, will US policymakers take action to capture this potential?
Our work at Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) has shown that the state of digital health in both the US and abroad calls for a more effective health care ecosystem to support the potential of a digitally connected future.
Barriers to a digital health future
From life expectancy to post-operative complications, maternal mortality, chronic disease management and more, US patients fare worse than their peers in comparable countries. For patients from underserved racial and ethnic groups, these disparities are often more pronounced.
This graphic shows five challenges that are holding back health care advancement and accessibility in the US: misaligned incentives, barriers to innovation, lack of interoperability and poor data collection, workplace challenges and poor patient experience.
The future of health care is digitally connected.
At EY US, we envision a digital future for the health care system that includes smart hospitals and ecosystems centered around care delivered at the most cost-effective, convenient location, built on a foundation of widely available data, real-time insights and frictionless consumer-focused experiences.
Foundational to this ecosystem is home-based care, enabled by wearables, remote patient monitoring, care navigators and connected care teams that empower patients across geographic locations and demographic backgrounds to remain healthy and in their communities for as long as possible. This white paper explores each of our five challenges and the policies needed to attain the digital health future.
1. Payment infrastructure
This graphic shows an alternative payment model (APM) framework broken out into four categories that represent the majority of health care payments in the US. Category 1 is fee-for-service (FFS) payments with no link to quality and value. Category 2 is FFS payments that are linked to quality and value. Category 3 is APMs built on FFS architecture. Category 4 is population-based payment.
2. Digital health investment
This graphic highlights four barriers to digital health innovation: inadequate investment and startup constraints; burdensome approval pathways; inadequate coverage and payment policy; and lack of deployment and adoption. The graphic also outlines the desired future state as one with a sustainable pathway to promote innovation through up-front investment, streamlined approvals, adequate coverage and payment policy, and incentives that drive adoption.
3. Interoperability
80% of medical data is unstructured.1
It’s a double-edged sword. It’s nice to be able to have access to all the information about a patient that’s ever been recorded, but it’s also incredibly difficult to pull the information you want in a timely way.
US clinician who participated in the recent EY Global Voices in Health Care Study
4. Workforce
This bar graph shows the number of health care professionals (HCPs) leaving the workforce during the period from 2021 to 2022, broken out by role. At over 71,000, physicians were by far the largest group to leave the profession. A total of more than 145,000 HCPs left health care during that period.
5. Patient experience
While many patients stand to benefit from the digitally enabled tools that are commonplace in other industries, there is a generational divide that creates a need for more optionality and education that doesn’t currently exist.
This graphic shows six patient segments with differing attitudes toward health care: in-the-moment strugglers, price-conscious experience hunters, the blended, experience-first youngsters, mature altruists and those who are all about health.
Global digital health examples
Click on the highlighted countries to learn more:
Aligning incentives: Argentina’s Plan Nacer for neonatal care
Innovation: Singapore’s GenAI Sandbox
Promoting interoperability: UAE’s digital health care platform
Bolstering the workforce: Australia’s Stronger Rural Health Strategy and HeaDS UPP workforce data and planning tool
Patient experience: France’s Mon espace santé (My health space)
Argentina’s Plan Nacer for neonatal care¹
Singapore’s GenAI Sandbox²
UAE’s digital health care platform³
Australia’s Stronger Rural Health Strategy and HeaDS UPP workforce data and planning tool⁴
France’s Mon espace santé (My health space)⁵
How health care policy can shape our digital health future
Progress through policy: the digital health imperative
Unlocking health care innovation to enhance access and improve outcomes
Around the globe, our peer nations have shown the positive effects of embracing digitally enabled tools and patient-centric solutions can have on patient care. In the US, creating a more digital and patient-friendly health care system that enables all clinicians to practice at the top of their license begins with federal policy. Policymakers must focus on making improvements that lift barriers to innovation, reward providers for the quality and value of the care provided and maintain a robust health care workforce that can deliver the digital care of the future.
