E-enabled Patient-Provider Communication in Context

Abstract

With continued focus on the move to value-based care payment models, one major challenge is how to enable effective critical response for patient-centered care delivery. Several alternative care delivery models have emerged to support asynchronous, non-traditional communication modalities between patients and providers beyond in-person clinical visits. These new models are pertinent not only to chronic and preventive care, but also to other care scenarios that require critical responses, such as the situation we are currently experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, our understanding of new care delivery models to support critical response is still under-investigated. This chapter explores informatics approaches for designing and implementing E-enabled novel care delivery models to support patient-provider communication. Our work goes beyond the usual social determinants of health, such as age, gender and socio-economic status, to include communication-related factors such as e-health literacy, regional and individual differences in communication preferences and styles, ethics and regulatory issues, and different modalities for care delivery.