Improving Technology‐Driven Patient Care Coordination: Toward a Techne for Community‐Based Organization Involvement

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.324
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019

395

doi: 10.1002/wmh3.324

© 2019 Policy Studies Organization

Improving Technology‐Driven Patient Care

Coordination: Toward a Techne for Community‐Based

Organization Involvement

Dawn S. Opel

Health‐care systems increasingly collect and aggregate patient data from electronic medical record

systems to aid in their decision making. Community‐based organizations that support patients’health

and well‐being have been left behind in the development and use of technologies for coordinating

patient care, despite policies that encourage cross‐sector coordination. This article presents the au-

thor’s work as a rhetorician on a community‐engaged action research project to seek grant funding

and health‐care partners to implement a tool that enables community‐based organization professionals

to connect to health‐care providers to coordinate care for under‐resourced older adult patients. The

team’s practices from the project are used to inform a techne, or set of rhetorical strategies, for

community‐based organizations to participate in population health management initiatives. Under-

standing these strategies as a techne to train other community‐based organizations to participate in

cross‐sector initiatives may be critical to effectuating the goals of the Affordable Care Act and other

health policies that seek to improve population‐level health outcomes.

KEY WORDS: social determinants of health, techne, care coordination

Introduction: Addressing the Social Determinants of Health through

Technology‐Driven Initiatives

Recent U.S. health policy data reveals that its health‐care system remains in

crisis. Even with increased insurance coverage under the Patient Protection and

Affordable Care Act (2014), millions remain uninsured and underinsured, costs are

rising while choice in and quality of care are decreasing (Himmelstein, Woolhan-

dler, Almberg, & Fauke, 2017). The Affordable Care Act was meant to address

health‐care delivery improvement, using a paradigm called the “Triple Aim.”In

2008, Berwick, Nolan, and Whittington (2008, p. 760)introduced the Triple Aim

concept, a set of linked goals to improve the American health‐care system by

“improving the individual experience of care; improving the health of populations;

and reducing the per capita costs of care for populations.”What differentiated the

Triple Aim from other health‐care improvement strategies was its focus at the level

of patient populations. Population health management (PHM)has emerged as a set

of tactics by which to enact the Triple Aim. While PHM practices may differ from

site to site, most involve the pursuit of (i)improvements in health‐care at the