Sending an app, logging into your own patient file, measuring your blood pressure, weight or heart rate at home: digital communication between patients and healthcare staff is increasing. Also in the Wilhelmina Hospital Assen (WZA). “Not only the number of patients with digital care is growing, but also the applications,” says Saskia Carli of the WZA.
The big advantage of digitization is that sufficient care will remain available in the future, explains Saskia Carli. The digital care advisor of the Wilhelmina Hospital in Assen outlines the situation: “We are increasingly dealing with an aging population and a growing number of treatment options. Digitization helps our healthcare employees to meet the greater demand for healthcare. It ‘unburdens’ the care providers and the patient is happy with the fast digital means of communication that make customized care possible.”
The digitization of healthcare requires adjustments from both the patient and the healthcare providers, Carli admits. “As a patient, you have to be digitally skilled. You see that working patients up to the age of 60 can keep up with digital developments, but that the elderly have more difficulty. It is not easy for everyone to log in with DigiD or work with apps. These people will continue to receive all relevant mail and information at their home address. But we do want to promote digital care.”
Shift of work
Due to digitalisation, you see a shift in the work of healthcare providers, says Carli. “No new positions have really been added, except for me and my colleague as digital care advisers. In particular, the employees need knowledge of the digital possibilities and must be educated and trained in this, so that they can answer questions from patients and work well with them themselves. For example, you now see that healthcare providers combine app and telephone services. The apps partly replace the telephone calls.”
More attention is also being paid to digitization within healthcare training and among doctors in training. “I know that there is a new Care & Technology module within the MBO Nursing course at Drenthe College. Other educational institutions are working on it, but I don’t know exactly how that translates into the curriculum. Interns are made aware of the digitization internally. How should they work with it and what can they do with it? For example, a doctor will make more video calls with people in the future. That requires different skills than direct contact with patients during physical consultation hours.”
Within the WZA, digital communication takes place in three ways: with the BeterDichtbij app, via MijnWZA and with the help of the Thuismeten app. “Measuring at home is a more active form of care, which is mainly used in outpatient clinics. We currently have 550 patients who are actively engaged in Home Measurement. Since the start of Home Measurement in April 2019, a total of 1500 patients have participated. We started a heart failure program. In the meantime, eight Home Measurement Programs are running and four are ready to go live soon, including hormone therapy for prostate cancer and a program for the home treatment of chronic bowel diseases.”
This way we only see people when necessary
With Home Measurement, the patient can, for example, measure blood pressure, heart rate and weight in his own familiar environment and pass this on using an app. A healthcare employee can monitor whether everything is going well and can intervene if they think it is necessary. “It saves physical visits to the hospital. The patients are, as it were, let loose a bit. We loosen the line a bit and tighten it again when we see that things are going less well. For example, we only see people when necessary and the patient is monitored remotely. It gives them a calm and safe feeling”, is how Carli sums up the benefits.
Expansion
Because care providers and patients are satisfied with digital care, the demand for digital programs is expanding like an oil slick. “We work with the Luscii app and share programs with other hospitals that work with the same app. Furthermore, as a medical developer I can also write programs myself. This enables us to provide more and more digital care, with an emphasis on the four v’s: preventing, relocating, replacing and enriching care. We want to prevent the deterioration of the health condition through digital monitoring, we move part of the care to the patients’ homes, we replace the telephone with time-independent means of communication and we provide enrichment by providing the patient with customized care. With the four Rs we can guarantee good care in the future.”
With the BeterDichtbij app, patients can quickly ask a question to the healthcare staff. “We have about 38,500 active conversations in this app, in which questions about appointments, medication use or certain complaints can be asked. These are questions that used to be asked over the phone. The advantage for patients is that they can send an app at any time. It gives the staff room to answer them at a convenient time. This happens almost daily, but we indicate a response time of three days in the app,” explains Carli.
Login to My WSA – the patient’s own care environment – is another part of digital care. ,,You can find all appointments here, but also results of examinations, information folders that are important to the patient and questionnaires can be completed online in preparation for a hospital visit via Mijn WZA. The list is immediately available in the hospital system and no longer needs to be retyped, as is the case with questionnaires completed on paper.
That is good for both parties
Within the WZA, a conscious decision was made not to use so-called digital nurse as is done in some hospitals. “We think it should be normal and that everyone should be able to work with digital means of communication. You shouldn’t make it special and set it apart as a function, because then there is a chance that some of the employees will not be interested in digitization.”
The reactions show that WZA employees notice the positive effects of digitization in their daily work. “For me, measuring at home is bringing digital care closer. This allows me to respond to the patient more quickly and in different ways in certain situations and the patient can also indicate more easily that contact with me is desirable. This is good for both parties. As a result, I work more behind a PC than before, but I don’t think that’s a problem,” says Hannie Bouwman, a nurse specialist in surgery. And MDL oncology nurse Annemiek Visser: “Due to daily monitoring, complaints from chemotherapy are recognized earlier. This makes it safer for the patient and more reassuring for me. Thanks to Thuismeten and the BeterDichtbij app, I can answer the patient’s complaints and questions at a time that suits me. As a result, I experience less work pressure.”