HFES Issues Policy Statement on Improving Accessibility to Healthcare and Overcoming Health Disparities
The healthcare system is becoming increasingly digitized, with the development and utilization of different modes of treatment, such as virtual healthcare, accelerated through necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This digital transformation provides great potential to expand opportunities for patient engagement in the healthcare system and for patients to be more actively involved in their care. Engagement is shown to improve autonomy and patient self-management behaviors, thereby improving treatment outcomes (Franklin et al., 2021; Muscat et al., 2021). However, the usefulness and utility of these digital tools is largely contingent on how comfortable patients are with technology interaction, how well they understand health information, and their access to the healthcare system, each of which varies widely among the diverse US patient population. The ability to better deliver care to the highly diverse patient population in the United States will significantly improve health outcomes in general, as well as during future pandemics and health emergencies.