April 4-6, 2024 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Innovations in Health Communication
Innovations in Health Communication
Abstract: Realizing Technology’s Potential to Better Patient-Provider Communication, Mitigate Health Inequalities: The Imagination Challenge
Rationale: Researchers, healthcare professionals and organizations, as well as policymakers have shown sustained interest over the last two decades in the effects of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on healthcare and health inequalities more broadly, and on patient-healthcare provider communication more specifically. Various forms of technology (e.g., electronic health records, telehealth applications, wearable activity trackers, smartphone apps) are increasingly used by healthcare professionals and patients. The recent COVID-19 pandemic amplified interest in the adoption of ICTs and their impact in healthcare and on health disparities, as various forms of technology were employed to address pandemic-related challenges, such as the impact of public orders for physical distancing on healthcare seeking. The pandemic also strengthened concerns that ICTs can exacerbate health inequalities and generate new ones. Given the promises and perils of digital health tools, we examine:
RQ1: How are ICTs used currently by health professionals and patients in local, diverse communities?
RQ2: How do healthcare providers and patients envision using such technologies in the future?
RQ3: What are individual, organizational, and community-level factors that enable and constrain the use of health ICTs?
Research Design: We investigate stakeholders’ perspectives on the use of health ICTs in healthcare settings through a mixed-methods research design. In this paper, we focus on findings from semistructured interviews with healthcare providers (n=20) and patients (n=20), recruited across four primary care clinical sites (including but not limited to university hospital-affiliated health centers and federally qualified health centers) serving diverse communities. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Their duration of patient interviews ranged from 20-60 minutes, whereas those of providers ranged between 30-70 minutes. All interviews were transcribed, and Spanish-language interviews were translated prior to analysis. Data analysis was a multistage process informed by flexible coding procedures described by Deterding and Waters (2021), as an alternative to grounded theory.
Findings & Interpretation: Even among patients with considerable relevant experience, ICT use to pursue health-related goals and particularly to facilitate communication with healthcare providers was highly episodic. Several sociodemographic predictors that the ICT adoption literature suggests are typical emerged in our analysis (e.g., age, socio-economic position, formal education). Even among those most experienced, however, use of ICTs in healthcare was limited. Additionally, interviews with healthcare professionals highlighted that the rapid adoption of ICTs during the COVID-19 pandemic transformed patient-provider communication across clinical sites significantly, primarily through deployment of telemedicine/telehealth applications. However, this adoption was forced by the emergent nature of the crisis, and clinical sites did not have the time to develop necessary organizational complements (McAfee, 2006) to ensure maximum payoff. Our data suggest that one of the key challenges to realizing the potential of ICTs is to be found in the seeming inability of patients and healthcare professionals to imagine how ICTs could improve healthcare and patient-provider communication in the future.
Conclusion: We conclude by discussing implications of findings for theories of technology adoption, particularly in healthcare, and articulate goals for interventions promoting ICT adoption for improved patient-provider interactions.
RQ1: How are ICTs used currently by health professionals and patients in local, diverse communities?
RQ2: How do healthcare providers and patients envision using such technologies in the future?
RQ3: What are individual, organizational, and community-level factors that enable and constrain the use of health ICTs?
Research Design: We investigate stakeholders’ perspectives on the use of health ICTs in healthcare settings through a mixed-methods research design. In this paper, we focus on findings from semistructured interviews with healthcare providers (n=20) and patients (n=20), recruited across four primary care clinical sites (including but not limited to university hospital-affiliated health centers and federally qualified health centers) serving diverse communities. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Their duration of patient interviews ranged from 20-60 minutes, whereas those of providers ranged between 30-70 minutes. All interviews were transcribed, and Spanish-language interviews were translated prior to analysis. Data analysis was a multistage process informed by flexible coding procedures described by Deterding and Waters (2021), as an alternative to grounded theory.
Findings & Interpretation: Even among patients with considerable relevant experience, ICT use to pursue health-related goals and particularly to facilitate communication with healthcare providers was highly episodic. Several sociodemographic predictors that the ICT adoption literature suggests are typical emerged in our analysis (e.g., age, socio-economic position, formal education). Even among those most experienced, however, use of ICTs in healthcare was limited. Additionally, interviews with healthcare professionals highlighted that the rapid adoption of ICTs during the COVID-19 pandemic transformed patient-provider communication across clinical sites significantly, primarily through deployment of telemedicine/telehealth applications. However, this adoption was forced by the emergent nature of the crisis, and clinical sites did not have the time to develop necessary organizational complements (McAfee, 2006) to ensure maximum payoff. Our data suggest that one of the key challenges to realizing the potential of ICTs is to be found in the seeming inability of patients and healthcare professionals to imagine how ICTs could improve healthcare and patient-provider communication in the future.
Conclusion: We conclude by discussing implications of findings for theories of technology adoption, particularly in healthcare, and articulate goals for interventions promoting ICT adoption for improved patient-provider interactions.