What the Fintech journey can teach us

The connection between different facets of our health is clearer than ever. The pandemic highlighted the ways in which reduced physical mental health and physical health are linked – and recent research shows that ongoing stressors around finances also affect mental and physical health.

This connection means that even in the face of inflationary pressures, rising medical costs and dwindling household savings, healthcare providers and systems have a unique opportunity to help improve people’s financial health by extending the cycle of care beyond traditional medical care plans. Already adept at incorporating innovations that impact patient care, the healthcare sector can borrow from the fintech playbook to create and implement innovative solutions that address patient finances by lowering treatment costs or creating more flexible ways to pay.

But just as with medical conditions, the connection between money and health is deep and varied with many different drivers.

The economic health connection

Financial health is achieved when individuals and families can manage their daily financial lives, manage financial shocks such as unexpected medical events, and are ready to pursue opportunities and thrive.

Poor financial health can lead to stress or skipped treatments that have negative physical or mental health consequences. Conversely, good physical and mental health can improve our financial prospects through fewer sick days and a better ability to focus.

Research also shows that financial health is a better predictor of physical and mental health outcomes than income alone, and the disproportionate impacts that COVID-19 has had on marginalized communities further confirms this.

Social determinants of health

Consider medical debt, a spiraling financial concern in America that clearly demonstrates this link. With one in five American households carrying medical debt, it is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the country.

Often unexpectedly, the financial disruption and destruction caused by medical debt can damage physical and mental health as well as social well-being. It impairs people’s ability to pay for basic necessities such as food or housing, avoid credit card debt, save and pursue education or career plans. It can lead to debt collection calls, wage garnishments and a drop in credit scores – all negative consequences for financial health.

But medical debt also has health consequences. People with medical debt have tripled the rate of mental health conditions such as anxiety, stress and depression. They are also more likely to forego care due to cost, leading to worsening health conditions and possible larger bills in the future if the crisis occurs. Unexpected health care costs leading to debt, which then drives deteriorating health, creates a vicious interdependence that becomes increasingly difficult to break.

Medical debt and financial health more generally are key social determinants of health, but more can be done. For example, there is a huge opportunity for health system actors to move further upstream and address economic health as a primary driver of immediate material security needs, such as housing, food and transportation.

Our recent exploration of medical debt, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, sought to understand the role different players in the healthcare ecosystem can play in reducing or resolving medical debt. We found—no surprise—that the complex and overlapping drivers of medical debt require a more collaborative approach between policymakers, hospital systems, insurers and employers.

By working together to better align financial assistance and benefits with consumer needs, help consumers make more informed decisions; and proactively identify and support patients at risk, these organizations can more quickly and effectively reduce the negative impacts of social determinants such as medical debt.

Innovation, collaboration and impact

Although it will take time to create this change, there are lessons to be learned from the fintech sector. There, innovators leveraged technology to more quickly understand consumers, establish measurement standards and then connect data from and with legacy systems. These organizations ultimately helped promote financial inclusion by embracing the underlying premise that what’s good for consumers is also good for business.

Similarly, we need to align healthcare and financial services providers, policy makers, employers, insurers and innovators around the central promise of doing well by doing well at the intersection of physical, mental and financial health. Businesses that support the health and wellness along with the financial health of their employees and customers will achieve greater loyalty, trust and reputation in the community.

Technology innovators also have a role to play in bridging the gap between health and economic health. The growing embrace of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in both healthcare and finance may provide one opportunity.

Tools that assess real-time, data-based observations of our financial behavior in accordance with our health conditions can help identify new connections and opportunities for treatment. For example, what if a person’s wearable device reports decreased sleep and irritable bowel syndrome on the same days each month? AI will notice this trend and look for causality, recognizing the recurring days along the lines of a monthly car bill and regularly low bank balances. An automated wallet can then move the due date to better align with available funds, helping to reduce stress and digestive issues versus a visit to the doctor and money for medicine.

Of course, this kind of approach requires holistic thinking and deep collaboration between fintech and health tech innovators addressing complex issues like mismatches in data metrics or how to navigate privacy and ownership or racial bias in data. And while there is generous room for technological innovation, technology alone will not solve all our problems. There still needs to be a human element to support consumers in making informed decisions about their health and wealth.

Regardless, the foundation is being laid to understand how financial health is one of the many drivers that influence better patient outcomes. Now we need to come together as different industries around a common understanding of the challenge, the connection between its origins and an agreement to change the status quo.