Healthcare Leaders Gather in Bethesda for MedCity ENGAGE 2015

On Tuesday July 14 and Wednesday, July 15, payers, providers, policymakers, healthcare IT and more will gather in Bethesda, Maryland for MedCity ENGAGE: Innovation in Patient Engagement. They will discuss the latest trends in patient behavior and healthcare delivery, giving healthcare professionals an inside look at how they can better engage patients.

"Things are not going to change and people are not going to get healthier without starting to treat a patient like you've never treated them before: like a consumer," said Chris Seper, who is hosting MedCity ENGAGE. "In the past, doctors prescribed medications and you just took it, or you didn't. But healthcare now is about keeping people healthier. That's a key reason that more people are talking about patient engagement."

MedCity ENGAGE will gather the whole spectrum of people, from doctors to hospital workers to pharmacists to patients, to take a fresh new look at the future of healthcare, in the era of widespread insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

"The only way to solve the big problems of keeping people healthier is to treat patients as peers, and bring everyone working together to accomplish the main mission of healthcare: to heal" said Seper. "There are very few conferences that get these groups together to solve these problems. You have to become invested in talking to patients and treat them with respect."

Seper said that the ACA has transformed the field of medical care. With more people insured now than ever before, the way rules are being set and the way the government will pay the hospital or physician through Medicaid is now based on how well people get. Doctors must show that their patients are being adherent to their medicines and improving in their their ailments, rather than being readmitted to hospitals.

"One of the ways this is happening is that large employers are dedicating more resources to health and wellness, because they need to cut the cost of healthcare, and a healthy employee is a happy employee," said Seper. "Seven years ago, you couldn't have gotten an immunization at Walgreens, but today, there are more places to access healthcare than in the past. If you go to the hospital now, you're usually really sick, otherwise you'd go to a small satellite office or a mini clinic. Healthcare is a slow-moving beast, like a battleship being pushed by a tugboat, and it takes a while for it to move."

The direction healthcare is currently moving in is a digital one. MedCity ENGAGE's conference will hold two panels and a workshop on the latest in healthcare IT. This includes the digital apps created by major healthcare companies to check prices, schedule appointments, get medications and chart health. Healthcare companies are tracking this data to see how it will help them treat their patients better. Seper said that this will help show not only the thought leadership creating these apps, but the patients who use them to seek better treatment and health.

The conference has a very impressive array of speakers to lead these workshops and panels, among them Mandi Pratt-Chapman, MA, director of the George Washington University Cancer Institute; David Pittman, eHealth Reporter from Politico; Roy Beveridge, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer from Humana;; and Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward MD, from the Oregon Legislative Assembly.

But Seper is most looking forward to the keynote speaker, Susannah Fox, Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"She has a long track record as a patient advocate, and this is one of the first times people can hear her speak as the Chief Technology Officer," said Seper. "The federal government is encouraging technology adoption and its use in healthcare. There is a lot of debate about how much input patients should have in creating policy, and how much physicians should consult with patients. The government is having that conversation now, and it is one of the most interesting."

Another speaker he is looking forward to hearing from is Kezia Fitzgerald -- Chief Innovation Director, Owner and Co-Founder , CareAline Products, LLC. After both herself and her infant child got cancer at the same time, Fitzgerald made products for her child, because nothing fit or worked, when it came to comfort. Her child passed away, but she channeled her energy into becoming an entrepreneur, creating products for other infants with cancer. She is teaming up with Mark Toubin to deliver these products to Texas hospitals.

Going forward, healthcare will no longer be a passive interaction, where patients give information to doctors. Now, healthcare providers are gathering information about you, in the way the Apple Research Kit was used to look at health disparities in the Pride study at University of California San Francisco.

"Technology now is going to be able to gather more info and act in more areas underserved in the health community, and that is probably the most exciting thing," said Seper. "Through Apple Research, thousands more are signing up for clinical trials, being passively surveyed, finding more opportunities to get info, and get better treatment wherever they are."

He warned that there is still a lot to be determined about how comfortable people are having their health tracked by technology and the info sent to their insurance company, and what will happen when companies realize that they can make big money off the data you provide.

"We haven't settled on how this should be appropriately handled," he concluded. "But what's exciting is that there is more data out there than ever before, and we are finding out how to take better advantage of it and make people healthier."

MedCity News is the leading online news source for the business of innovation in healthcare, now responsible for healthcare within Breaking Media. It offers insight onto what's next and what matters with a mix of breaking news and analysis on startups and established industry leaders, personalities, policies and the most important deals. Along with the website, medcitynews.com, MedCity produces three must-attend events in the healthcare industry, The Mid-America Healthcare Venture Forum, ENGAGE and CONVERGE.

MedCity ENGAGE will be held on July 14-15 at the Hyatt Regency Bethesda, 1 Bethesda Metro Center in Bethesda, Maryland. For information, visit http://events.medcitynews.com/engage/about-2/. For free tickets, use code EDGERADIO and register at http://www.eventbrite.com/e/medcity-engage-2015-tickets-16010561019