Data-Driven advocacy programs
In today’s ever-changing health system, employers must engage the employees in making decisions that are related to their health. In essence, this helps to improve clinical outcomes and controlling costs. REF notes that as long as the consumers have no idea about the healthcare system, they will continue being exploited by insurance companies that deduct a lot of money from their salaries. Employers are trying hard to engage their employees in focusing on ways of managing their well-being. They can only achieve this either by the use of healthcare data or by using opt-in advocacy programs. This paper will focus on the advantages and disadvantages of the two options. So as more healthcare organizations start to participate in health information exchange, they need to understand these pros and cons.
Healthcare data has been used and is still being used to increase an employee’s engagement in decision making. Some of the advantages of using healthcare data to make decisions are that one can identify the gaps that exist in the recommended care, rule out the risks, and late come up with a solution.
Data-Driven advocacy programs
Organizations that make data-driven decisions are more likely to motivate their employees to attend to their lifestyle and medical issues. With health data, one goes through other patients/person’s health journey and identify the possible risks and ways of reducing these risks. It is with data that one can determine if the recommended care has bottlenecks and if there are initiate ways in which an employee can meet these needs. For example, an advocate has all the data on diabetic patients, their costs of medication, and what the risk factors are.
The main disadvantage of data-driven advocacy programs is that sometimes the data is too complicated for the employee to understand and make a rational decision. Identifying a person who can create a mental picture of someone’s health journey with some level of analytics is not widely available at an affordable amount. Additionally, because data-driven advocacy programs primarily use claims, it gets to people very late as they look for suits. This program has to convince people to take part in the effort.
Opti-In advocacy programs
Opt-in is a model that embraces open-minded plans where a client can contact their advocate whenever they have a problem with regards to their healthcare. This program engages more people, and it has a likelihood of identifying those who are the early stages of their medical condition. This advocacy program encourages those people who are eligible to get to talk to the advocates, in case they are facing any challenges concerning their health. However, there is an inability for one t predict what needs will arise in the future, thus, the need to continue reminding the employee with the hope that they’ll remember to contact the advocate when the need arises.