Healthcare Concierge Service - Care Navigators

NEW HEALTHCARE "CONCIERGE" SERVICES BENEFIT BOTH PATIENTS AND PROVIDERS
by Teresa Burns, Care Navigators
A man learns his mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. What's his next step? A woman's father has had a stroke and needs intensive rehabilitation. How does she find the best place to treat him? A couple has a brain-injured son who needs adaptive equipment. How do they begin the search? When it comes to difficult medical situations like those described above, it's not necessarily getting answers to critical questions that is the hardest part. More often, it's just trying to figure out the right questions.
In fact, when faced with a dire medical issue, few people or their family members have any idea what the first step is. Worse, they don't even know what they don't know. Let's say someone's grandparent has just been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. What is the caregiver's first task? Call the primary care physician for a recommendation? Contact rehab facilities? Or begin investigating long-term solutions like nursing homes or assisted living?
   As a result of these types of medical conundrums, we have been witnessing the appearance of various healthcare referral services: companies that help steer patients and their families through the maze of healthcare options. These services began to spring up after it became apparent that patients and families were becoming extremely perplexed when faced with life-altering medical decisions. People were not fully educated on the multiple facets of the healthcare industry, and were largely unaware of the services and support available to them. Of course, the goal of these services was to guide the public towards the optimal choices for their loved ones' individual conditions. But they were serving an even greater purpose: to help patients and their families determine the proper first steps in any health-related scenario.
   Some of these services are more comprehensive than others. Many simply provide a list of available resources and require the client to make the contact themselves. Others will do more "hand holding," calling the resources, setting up the appointments, and even accompanying the client to each appointment to ensure that the right questions are asked - and answered. Thus, while some of these services only point clients in the right direction and assist them with the first few steps, others act as more of a "concierge": guiding the client through the entire process from the time of hospitalization to discharge home and everything in-between, as well as determining the quality of the service the client experienced at each stop along the way.
   There are multiple reasons for the appearance of these healthcare referral services. As noted earlier, the pure volume of healthcare choices, as well as people's lack of awareness of the initial steps in any medical crisis, is the primary reason. But, as we are all aware, people are living longer than ever before. While this is certainly a positive development, it also means that they will require medical care for a much larger portion of their lives - until an age that, generations ago, was largely unreachable.
   It's also true that in a crisis, most people have no idea where to turn. For a long-term condition like Alzheimer's, some caregivers may have done initial research at the onset of the disease, giving them a knowledge base that can prove useful once the disease reaches an advanced stage. But what about a hip fracture or a stroke? Such an event can happen in the blink of an eye, leaving caregivers in a frantic scramble to determine the best possible course of medical action. In these cases, a healthcare referral service will prove especially valuable.
   And of course, there is the specter of healthcare reform looming on the horizon. Although no one knows yet how all of the elements of the current bill will shake out, one thing is clear: the face of healthcare will change dramatically. As a result, there will be significant changes - and the inevitable confusion - about the available choices. Services that help navigate patients and their families through the transformed healthcare landscape will become even more critical.
   It is not just the consumer who benefits from these services. The healthcare resources themselves - hospitals, physicians, nursing homes and all the ancillary providers that comprise the total continuum of medical care - certainly benefit as well. At their most basic level, the referrers spread the word in the healthcare marketplace about these resources; in this age of shrinking operating budgets, most healthcare providers can use all the marketing help they can get.
   Perhaps even more crucial is that the better referral services can act as a kind of customer-service "barometer." If a person enters a nursing home but eventually ends up in another, the original facility often doesn't get feedback on what triggered the switch. The more comprehensive services - the ones that follow a patient all the way through their medical situation until the initial outcome - can supply a provider with invaluable feedback on the customer's experience. In the event of a negative experience, corrective measures can then be implemented.
   Finally, these healthcare services can serve an important networking function for healthcare entities. Many of these services, in fact, offer networking events at which providers can learn of each other's capabilities. Consequently, the referral possibilities between providers become an excellent potential source of new business. Further, it makes each provider a more valuable resource to their current patient base, augmenting their customer-service effort and ultimately leading to higher levels of customer satisfaction.
   When a healthcare referral service is performing its function the way it was intended, it is connecting healthcare providers and patients in a way that benefits both. It's as close to the perfect win-win situation as you can get.