Person-Centered HealthCare

Person-centered healthcare

This is a story about the jacket painting of Tom Evans, MD. If you read Tom’s biography you’ll see many accomplishments in his long career. He has succeeded at so many things. He has a BA, MA and MD to his name. But today we are going to hear about Tom’s failure.[read more]

person-centered healthcare

These days, due to the growing presence of smartphones, tablets and other portable devices, patients are just as likely to walk out of their doctor’s office with instructions to download a medical mobile application to their phone as they are to walk out with paper prescriptions or instructions.[read more]

person-centered healthcare

Current approaches to patient-centered care are based on aggregated preferences rather than individualized needs. Researchers and health systems deploy focus groups and surveys to assess general patient preferences in an effort to determine “what patients want.” But patients are a diverse group with diverse needs.[read more]

A key component of illness management is the use of prescribed medications. For those who have several chronic conditions, there are usually numerous prescribed medications to keep track of and their effectiveness and benefits depend on the patient's adherence. Non-adherence (failure or delay in refilling prescriptions, cutting dosages, reducing frequency of administration) can lead to significant consequences.[read more]

Healthcare costs are continuing to rise at a level higher than inflation, quality is less than optimal, and our coordination of care is fragmented and disjointed. What is one solution to try to fix our healthcare system? A concept called patient-centered care.[read more]

I believe that it is our job to reach out and make it easier for those who have a lower health literacy or tech literacy level. They cannot simply be left behind. This is a moral obligation as well as a financial one. We are all paying in some way for those who are in ill health, and we all have to help as much as we can.[read more]

The government recently instituted Medicare’s Value Based Purchasing program to tie 1% of Medicare payments to patient satisfaction scores. For the first time in history, patient satisfaction is being directly linked to revenue on a national scale.[read more]

It is as natural for doctors, hospitals, health plans and others to aggressively affirm their “patient-centeredness” as it is for politicians to loudly proclaim their fealty to the hard-working American middle class. Like the politicians, the health care professionals no doubt believe every word they say. The most accurate measure of “patient-centered” care, however, lies not in intentions but implementation.[read more]

In times gone by, “patient engagement” may have meant focus groups about waiting room design or surveys about food offerings in the cafeteria. Vanderbilt University Medical Center has taken patient engagement to a new level with the creation and work of its Patient and Family Advisory Councils (there are two: one for adult services and one for children’s services).[read more]

This last December, an emergency room doc (thought to be female based on the handwriting) wrote a note to the widow of a patient she had treated in the Emergency Department of New York Presbyterian Hospital. The compassionate letter itself (original link here) continues to resonate with a large number of people as a gentle reminder of that critically important element of healthcare – the human element.[read more]

Most clinicans agree that it is part of our responsibility to provide patients with high-value care. Simultaneously, most Americans do not believe health care in our country is a good value. This begs the question, what is going wrong? And, more important, what can we do about it? Physicians are increasingly compelled to consider costs while caring for patients.[read more]

Doctors interrupt patients 18 seconds into an office visit, on average. Given this fact, patients who seek to maximize their healthcare must learn how to speak so that doctors will listen. There are three communication skills that, when applied to a doctor’s visit, can increase odds that your physician will hear, and help solve the problem.[read more]