The Connected Care Team

In this episode of The Connected Care Team podcast, Rebecca MacKinnon, founder, and CEO of 5th Dimension Strategies discusses her background in post-acute care and how technology factors into the shifting healthcare environment.

Meeting Demand in Post-Acute Care

Ask any healthcare professional why they joined the industry, and they will likely recount a personal story that motivated their decision. Rebecca MacKinnon’s interest in post-acute care was sparked in the late eighties when patients were being encouraged to self-manage their recovery process much sooner than in previous decades. After welcoming her second child, Rebecca returned home after just a 24-hour hospital stay.

“It always seemed an oddity to me that we spend less than 1% of our lives in a hospital or in a physician's office, but we spend probably 90% of our healthcare dollars in those two places. And so for me, post-acute just makes a lot of sense.” – Rebecca MacKinnon

Consulting in Health Tech

After founding Beyond Now, a home health EMR software company, Rebecca sold the company to Cerner. The experience revealed her passion for working with early-stage companies, leading to the creation of 5th Dimension Strategies, an early-stage consulting firm that supports healthcare technology companies. Rebecca has helped lead several companies through various growth cycles within acute care and other healthcare environments through her work.

“I think that any innovator who's entering healthcare has to pay particular attention to workflow and figure out how to create strategic relationships that really allow you to get into the steps that healthcare clinicians take.” – Rebecca MacKinnon

Engaging Patients in a Post-Acute Care Environment

As healthcare continues to shift to a post-acute care environment, providers are looking for ways to engage with patients outside the hospital. One of the biggest hurdles they face is the resistance of older patient demographics. Particularly in home health care, older patients have been slow to adopt healthcare technology, including virtual care and remote patient monitoring tools. Rebecca notes that younger demographics, who she refers to as “the new parent,” are big adopters of health tech.

“But I can say it's only the very oldest in, the 75 plus that are true resistance to tech because so much of the world has gone there. The rest of us know we have to adapt, it's just the pace of it.” – Rebecca MacKinnon

Related:

● Connect with Rebecca MacKinnon on LinkedIn

● Learn more about the TigerConnect Product Suite

Follow TigerConnect on LinkedIn for episodes, announcements, and news.

Subscribe to The Connected Care Team on your favorite platform to get new episodes first.

Learn more about the TigerConnect Product Suite

Follow TigerConnect on LinkedIn for episodes, announcements, and news

Subscribe to The Connected Care Team on your favorite platform to get new episodes first