Technological Hindrances of Behavioral Medicine Patient Access: A Literature Review

Abstract

Technology is a pervasive tool utilized throughout inpatient and outpatient hospital care. Behavioral medicine has a plethora of technology to integrate and support medical infrastructure and processes. A systematic literature review was performed to classify the technological hinderances that specifically plague behavioral medicine. Researchers examined articles contained within the databases of CORE, Elsevier, PubMed, ResearchGate, and ScienceOpen and pulled all relevant articles. A total of 85 articles were collected after the removal of duplicates. Several themes have been identified in the systematic literature review that negatively affects behavioral medicine treatment at the provider, clinical staff, non-clinical staff, patient, and organizational levels. These themes are a lack of behavioral medicine patient resources, a surfeit of stigmas surrounding treatment, higher levels of comorbidities in these patients as compared to non-behavioral medicine specialties, and a reliance on outdated educational protocols for training staff. The themes significantly affect patients within the behavioral medicine specialty more than other subsectors of medicine due to the unique ailments that behavioral medicine encompasses. The future climate of behavioral medicine treatment could be affected by the aforementioned hinderances. However, evidence in the literature review displays positive findings when employee education and technological integration are combined. Further research should be directed towards the implementation of SBE into clinical and non-clinical behavioral medicine employee training.