Her name was Joyce, and I had the pleasure of meeting her when she first came to my practice many years ago. Her hair was disheveled, she arrived late, and her health was a mess. Her diabetes and hypertension were way out of control, she was intermittently taking her medications, her diet was awful, she […]
Healthcare systems are evolving with the expectation that patients and families are collaborative partners in the overall plan of care. A major focus for providers is changing patient’s behavior in order to improve access, decrease cost, prevent readmission and improve health outcomes. A significant, if underappreciated, factor in this new order is the ability for […]
No one ever expects to be given the challenge of having multiple medical needs. It is time consuming, exhausting, and gives insight in to a world that most of us would rather not have: that of the U.S. healthcare system. And not just a system, but a very fragmented and broken system which patients and […]
It is with great joy I heard the OpenNotes Collaborative was named institutional winner of the John Q. Sherman Award for Excellence in Patient Engagement, at the NPSF Patient Safety Congress in May, 2014. In our 24 by 7 ecosystem, we often miss the ability to prioritize the connection between people, the real connections that […]
Republished with permission from SarahBethRN.com. Patient engagement is a trendy topic for healthcare providers – the latest spin terminology for “patient compliance” – as in how do I get patients to follow treatment protocols? Take better care of themselves? Especially now that payment for my services may be negatively affected by bad outcomes and poor […]
Every patient is different. And, so it seems, is every definition of patient engagement. No real revelation there. But it does expose a foundational imperative — where does patient engagement start? The easy answer, of course, is with the patient. But reality shows us that it often starts with caregivers and health care administrators who […]
For too many years, we in healthcare have celebrated the “compliant” patient—the person who takes the care plan, the medication regimen, the instructions that we hand to him/her and lives by it. How many times have you heard a patient referred to as “noncompliant” — or used that language yourself? How often have we lectured […]
Unintentional overdose deaths due to prescription narcotics have quadrupled since 1999 and now outnumber those involving heroin and cocaine.[i],[ii] As a result, such misuse of medications has been accurately described as a national epidemic by the CDC and consumes over $70 billion in health care costs. [iii],[iv] Controlling patients who frequent the emergency department (ED) […]
The bedside shift-to-shift nursing report isn’t new. It has been discussed as an effective patient engagement tool for at least 35 years. The Joint Commission identified communication failures during shift reports as a leading cause of sentinel events in the United States, and, in 2011, the National Patient Safety Foundation focused on the bedside report […]
The challenge for healthcare providers today is not how to engage their patients…but rather how to be more engaging. This is an important distinction. Grasping the distinction can make the difference between a highly effective, satisfying patient experience and what many of us get now – average care and experiences that leave us wanting for […]