The more medical care becomes digitized, the more efficient it becomes for both patients and producers. This is especially true in how it enables more comprehensive remote medicine. At the same time, provider organizations must ensure that patients of all ages and degrees of technical savvy can access it.
“Ultimately, it’s trying to make sure that wherever that patient is, we understand them at their level,” said Dr. Kathleen Spangler, a senior health care consultant at Maximus. This can take many forms, whether helping a veteran make an appointment on their smart phone, or helping a service member learn to operate a remote monitoring device.
Helping users understand the “why” of a medical device aids acceptance, Spangler said. Knowing the data that is collected from the patient and how it will be given to the provider will make the wearer’s next visit more effective – that gets patient buy-in from the beginning.
Spangler said Maximus helps military health organizations with services such as app design, to scheduling, and other functions that are in fact easy to use on any type of device.
Also, “we have folks along the way to help them,” Spangler said. “We have folks who are technology capable. Their full-time job is to help teach you how to use that particular device, whatever that technology may be.”
Remote monitoring takes an ever-growing range of capabilities and form factors. Devices can measure characteristics as diverse as blood sugar levels to sleep patterns. Data “automatically gets downloaded into your electronic health record,” Spangler said. Patients “can limit the amount of times they have to physically come into the hospital/clinic to get those blood tests by using remote health devices that monitors their sugar from anywhere.”
Remote monitoring improves efficiency of healthcare delivery. When paired with data analytical tools, it can help military readiness by giving commanders a read on the status of their forces. Spangler cited sleep monitoring as an example.
“If I have a lot of sailors on a ship, in 24-hour operations, as a leader, I can monitor the sailors’ sleep habits to make sure that they’re ready, they’re getting that proper sleep hygiene,” she said.
Spangler said the value-add Maximus brings to these technology components is systems integration “and also through process optimization.” She added, “Using that human-centered design approach, we want to make that the patient is at the center of what we do.” Plus, by ensuring systems centered on the EHR operate bidirectionally, integration also makes life more efficient “for the person who’s delivering that modality.” That is, the doctors, physicians’ assistants and nurses who deliver health care.
No more green sheets
Spangler was a long-serving Army nurse with deployment experience. She rose through the ranks to the executive level, culminating as the Director (CEO) of a major military treatment facility. She marveled at how, not so long ago, military medical personnel still dealt with paper documents known as green sheets.
Referring to the advent of electronic health records and online anywhere access to a service member’s relevant records, Spangler said, “Wow, that has been a game changer!” Although the save rate of injured service members was 98% then, Spangler said, “Could you imagine, directly on the battlefield, those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines – if they would have had some of the new-aged medical electronic devices we have now.”
Telemedicine lets doctors thousands of miles away not only see but also evaluate patients and recommend treatments, thereby improving care and provider productivity.
“You’ve got troops all over the world who need access to healthcare, some in the most austere settings. We just don’t have enough medical capability to be with every patient,” Spangler said. “But we do have a lot of military medical personnel all over the world who can be reached via telemedicine.” Integrated networks bring the flexibility, she said, to engage whatever type of provider a situation might call for.
Equally important, Spangler said, is the arrival of artificial intelligence.
“AI doesn’t take the place of that provider.” Spangler said. “It’s just helping facilitate care at a faster pace, and that’s what’s really exciting about it.” In fact, she said, it can retrieve records and stage data in such a fast, automated way as to help reduce the sense of burnout on the part of providers.
The Veterans Health Administration is behind the Defense Department in deploying its next-generation EHR. The goal remains, though, for a single source of truth for a given individual in centralized but universally accessible location, Spangler said.
Describing the goals of Maximus work with federal medical organizations, Spangler said, “We want to have a place where our medical information is put in one place that anybody can access anywhere.” She added, “But it’s quality, safe information that the patient can take with them, whether it’s with their phone, their watch or whatever gadget they want to use.”
Whether a schedule app for patients, or a resource for medical providers, applications should be simple and intuitive, Spangler said.
Providers “don’t want to have to click 25 buttons,” she said. “They want to be able to walk in, have a conversation with the patient, find out what’s going on and spend time with the patient instead of behind a computer screen.”
The interview origionally appeared on Federal News Network on March 27th, 2025. View the origional content here.