The busy world of healthcare today has primary care at its very core, but it’s facing persistent challenges. Clinicians are overwhelmed by paperwork and the “impossible math” of managing chronic conditions for large patient panels. Patients, on the other hand, frequently experience fragmented care, difficulty accessing information, and a lack of continuous support between office visits. Traditional care coordination, relying on manual outreach and disconnected reminders, rarely delivers the seamless experience patients deserve. Also, important questions and communications from patients back to care providers outside out of their appointments may never make it back to the care team.
This highlights a critical need: a reimagined approach to patient education that is continuous, personalized, and integrated into the care journey. Enter Tom, Lumeris’s AI-powered Primary Care as a Service (PCaaS) platform. Tom is designed to transform primary care by not just providing insights, but by actively engaging patients, reducing clinician burden, and ensuring that essential health information is accessible and actionable. The future of healthcare isn’t about AI replacing human expertise, but rather a symbiotic relationship where AI acts as an invaluable colleague, handling routine tasks and augmenting care delivery. This spotlight explains how Tom delivers patient education, why this is crucial, and its profound impact on both patients and clinicians.
Keeping Patients Engaged: How Tom Delivers Patient Education
Tom addresses gaps in traditional patient education by establishing a layer of continuous, conversational care that extends beyond episodic office visits. Instead of relying solely on infrequent check-ups, Tom engages patients regularly through multimodal check-ins, providing a consistent flow of information and support. This approach allows patient education to be delivered intelligently, at the right time with appropriate depth. This helps keep patients engaged and stay in control of their health and reduces challenges that exist in the traditional healthcare model.
Personalized and Contextual Guidance
Tom’s interactions are highly personalized, drawing on a longitudinal view of the patient, which includes demographic data, diagnoses, recent labs, and the history of prior conversations. This comprehensive understanding enables Tom to generate relevant and consistent interactions. For patients managing chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension, Tom can provide patient education that is tailored to their specific needs.
For instance, if a patient with diabetes has a recent A1c value, Tom might initiate a conversation to confirm the patient comprehends the lab result, and its implications. For patients with pre-diabetes, Tom can provide patient education on diabetes, factors contributing to elevated blood sugar, potential risks, and complications. Tom also plays a crucial role in preparing patients for visits and ensuring follow-through. For instance, in preparing a patient for a visit, Tom might provide patient education that highlights the importance of an annual visit or offers guidance on how to maximize their appointment or send relevant articles or video.
Leveraging Trusted Content from Wolters Kluwer UpToDate
A significant aspect of Tom’s educational capability is a partnership with Wolters Kluwer UpToDate. Tom utilizes award-winning patient education from UpToDate to provide patients with reliable, evidence-based, and easy-to-understand information that helps reinforce healthy habits. This content is valuable because it’s put together by thousands of doctor-authors and editors, ensuring it’s accurate, well-researched, and trustworthy. Meeting patients where they are, with trusted patient education content can enable them to take an active role in their care journey, reducing the need for patients to look for answers online, where they may encounter confusing or inaccurate information.
When Tom identifies a patient’s interest or a need for more information, it offers to send a relevant link during the conversation. This allows patients to receive these high-quality educational materials in real-time. Patients and their caregivers can access this education online whenever they need it, allowing them to revisit information if questions arise. This ensures patients have access to clear, accurate information, empowering them to make well-informed decisions about their health, and ultimately encouraging adherence to care plans, which is critical for improving outcomes and safety.
Effective patient education can contribute to better health outcomes.
Patient education empowers individuals to become active participants in their own care. When patients understand their condition, they are better equipped to make informed decisions and take control of their health. Providing the right information, when patients need it helps patients, especially those grappling with the anxiety and fear associated with a new diagnosis, to gradually absorb and act upon crucial health information. This reinforcement of healthy behaviors and lifestyle practices is essential for long-term well-being. The ability to ask questions and clarify information goes beyond mere reminders, fostering a deeper understanding over time can have a great impact. Proactive interactions from Tom can offer patient education resources to keep patients engaged and if possible, prevent conditions from drifting out of control down the line.
Supporting Clinicians and Optimizing Limited Resources
Clinicians are often short on time, overloaded with responsibilities and providing effective patient education during a typical office visit is not without challenges. Tom acts as an extension of the care team, providing education after appointments when patients are likely to encounter questions and be better prepared to receive new information. Tom can spend as much time as a patient needs to collect questions and provide patient education to overcome barriers. This support allows clinicians to focus on the irreplaceable human aspects of medicine, knowing that the foundational educational needs are being met.
Tom’s approach to patient education ensures that health management activities, from collecting blood glucose readings to assessing overdue screenings, are delivered within a cohesive outreach program. This coordinated experience reduces fragmentation and aims to reduce challenges in the patient’s journey.
Accessibility and Personalization
Tom meets patients where they are, communicating via their preferred channels. Tom’s ability to remember patient preferences and context, such as how they measure blood glucose or if they have a dog, makes interactions feel more personal and relevant. This personalized outreach can increase adherence to preventive care and boost satisfaction, contributing to overall well-being.
Clinicians benefit from time that feels better used. When patients arrive prepared, with their agenda and concerns already surfaced by Tom, clinicians can enter the visit with a clear picture of the individual’s needs, making the actual visit more focused and productive. Patients coming in with their medications listed and questions prepared leads to smoother visits, reducing the back-and-forth typically required for information gathering.
Patient Education’s role in the future of primary care
The transformation of patient education through Tom represents a significant evolution in primary care, moving towards a modern, sustainable model where continuous monitoring and engagement are the norm. By unifying screening reminders, data collection, adherence checks, and educational support within one conversational flow, patients receive a simpler, more coherent experience.
