Patients experience many barriers of communication and human connection between them and their medical providers—which primarily stems from a perception that the people that are responsible to take care of them don’t really know them, don’t have time to get to know them and don’t ultimately care about them. This perception can affect patients’ adherence to their medical treatment, fracture trust in medical interventions and institutions, and drive lack of satisfaction in their care.

The reality is quite the opposite. Physicians care deeply about their patients’ well beings. Toci streamlines communicaton processes and delivers important patient information safely and securely to providers, opening the door for more personalized care.

Medical providers are tasked with offering direct, hands-on patient care at the bedside and beyond. They monitor patients’ progress and often help advocate for the patient’s needs. However, they have limited time to know all the dimensions of their patients lives and connect with them on a human (non-medical) level, which leads in many cases to burnout and delivery of suboptimal care.

Toci has discovered that the lack of time is the primary catalyst for this pressing issue. Medical providers already have the capacity to act with profound empathy towards their patients if freed of other time-consuming activities such as documentation and patient story understanding. Both are processes that requires significant initial time investment. When recorded and automated, these two processes could become as easy as reading a news feed.

Story patient understanding is important in many situations, but has particular relevance in end-of-life patients, communities from minority backgrounds who may be more likely to face discrimination, patients with chronic illnesses who are frequently hospitalized, and patients with stigmatizing illnesses where it is important to understand its impact on their life. Furthermore, patient story understanding can lead to better management of social determinants of health. Knowledge of the patient story is most important to provide more humanistic care to patient but also can help build patient trust with their medical providers.

Health care administrators organize and oversee the health services and daily activities of a hospital or clinic. They manage staff and budgets, communicate between departments and ensure adequate patient care amongst other duties. 

Hospital administration needs TOCI to reduce time cost of medical documentation, improve patient-centered-care, reduce cost through better disease self-management, improve patient satisfaction and better management of vulnerable/costly patients. Hospital administrators increase recurrent revenue when patients are more satisfied and cost reduce generally when patient outcomes are improved.

Electronic Medical Records provide services to record and store patient data in integrated and secure platforms. Patient narratives integrated into EMRs would allow providers to access new valuable information about patients’ preferences, social determinants of health, and opportunities for clinical care and other services. Toci provides this information in an automated and standardized way that allows EMR companies to access this information too.

Insurance companies manage payment for patient health care, negotiates health services, and help with quality improvement efforts for clinicians and hospitals. They have an incentive to measure patient stories and social factors influencing health or wellbeing. Insurance companies are also incentivized by cost savings from reduced re-hospitalization rates and increased medication adherence if there is increased trust in their medical team and improved communication. For example, if a provider understands the patient’s life situation and values through Toci, they could better provide treatment plans that fits into the patient’s goals and capabilities.

Hospital case management teams help coordinate services for the patient including post-discharge facilities. Toci helps them understand the patient’s goals and needs for a long-term stay.

Social workers help assess patient’s social, emotional and financial support needed to work with the patient’s family and other service provider agencies to develop an effective plan of care for the patient, especially after hospital discharge. Toci helps social workers manage patients who face disparities in care, as the narratives can help uncover some of the social determinants of health that influences care.