New Generation Care

Aim and relevance of the initiative

New Generation Care – Wij doen het anders

We aim to stimulate and realize Patient Centred and High Quality HealthCare through data driven diagnosis and treatment.
Size: New Generation Care is an initiative planned to start up as a small pilot project with focus on in-depth analysis, not volume and will therefore comprise two selected medical conditions cancer and musculosketetal diseases. They will be expanded by selected additional medical conditions in a step-by-step approach only if previous step is satisfactorily accomplished.

Scope

New Generation care (NGCare) plans to offer health care services in the form of three legs.

The first leg will offer a general practitioner service (diagnosis and treatment)- called 1e line service in NL – based on the VBHC method. This service will be built up in a way that it enables to serve the patient as a “client”, with a real client-orientated approach. A big focus here will be E-health in form of the development of diagnosis indicators, wearables for patients (used for diagnosis and treatment by general practitioner), new generation electronic patient file, supporting software for general care for decision making and measurement of quality & costs of own care processes. Other major items will be carerelated prevention and personalised medicine. We hope to be able to realize bundle payment agreements with care insurers to be able to prove that VBHC can also work for the general practitioner.

The second leg will offer “advice about the best medical specialist”: On the basis of high transparency, excellent information and advice we aim to support the patient in making a substantiated and well-considered decision regarding the choice of the best medical specialist. In a world where health care tends to become more and more specialistic and patients – even though laymen – are expected to take over more responsibility for their health we want to provide the means and transparency which they need. This service will be first-class and available at reasonable price.

The third leg will offer the “Data Service”: While operating the 1st and 2nd leg, data will be gathered and analysed for the formation of outcome indicators (ICHOM – where available). As soon as the data volume allows representative conclusions deindividualized data will be made available for care professionals (such as care providers and care insurers) and in form of reports for patients. We aim to deliver excellence to be able to build up a reputation for high quality service and data and to earn respect and trust.

The data will be gathered in a foundation where the patients remain owner of their respective data and are stimulated to form a sounding board for NGCare.
NGCare aims to establish an “Advisory Council” where medical specialists give feedback on methods used for the service “advice best specialist” and ICHOM data produced.

The measurement and supply of standard (ICHOM) indictors done by an independent institution AND on behalf of the patient has the following advantages:

use of indictors for comparison of medical specialists and thus advice given to the patient; the focus here is the patient’s health and his decision about his treatment which he is forced to make – even though he is a medical layman
uniform comparison of doctors and treatments through use of standard outcome indicators (ICHOM) by the same institution with the same working procedures, thus preventing comparison of apples with pears
no risk of data manipulation because there is no conflict of interest
no limitation of sharing data with third parties for better medical outcome because there is no competitive rivalry
a release of the burden for institutions which do not have capacity and/or budget to collect and analyse data themselves

Patient description

The typical NGCare patient is emancipated and aware not only of his right for treatment choices but also of his own obligations and contributions to the healing proces in form of compliance, self-management and self-reliance. A corresponding coaching for staff and patients will be part of NGCare’s philosophy from day one. Apart from the Dutch patient who is covered by insured care also international patients shall be served which would mean potential additional income from uninsured care for care providers, especially hospitals. This model has helped hospitals in other European countries (e.g. Germany) making investments in equipment, education, etc. (thus in quality increase), where also patients from insured care automatically profit from. The overall level of care for the patient increases and the hospitals standing up to national and international competition can secure not only survival but continuous quality improvement in care in the long term. This is something unusual in NL and we hope to be able to open a door for it.

Methods

All three services pollinate each other. The corresponding care and work processes will be mapped in form of flowcharts and will undergo a continuous PDCA cycle. Indicators for quality and costs will identified. The Balanced Score Card method will be applied to secure real patient orientation and translation of strategic into operational goals with consequent implementation.

The most important results we aim for:

making a difference in each patient’s life who seeks our help, be it regarding his/her actual health improvement (thus measured in outcome indicators) or happiness with our service
contributing to a shift to more patient orientation
contributing to improvement in health care quality
contributing to affordability and thus access to health care for everybody

IPU’s/Partners

There are discussions ongoing with different care professionals and IT companies. As we see the key to innovation in diversity of thinking we will seek additional personnel/staff/advice from other industries and from medical institutions in other countries to realize crossbreeding in the real sense of the word.

Setting

This short summary shows the significant role E-Health will play with NGCare and indicates the necessity of close cooperation between medicine and IT. It explains the choice of the geographical location on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven (better access to IT specialists) and the proximity to the Health Innovation Campus in Veldhoven.