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This week on March 5, I'm delighted to have long-standing #hcsmca member and co-founder of #hcldr chat Colin Hung lead a discussion on patient engagement. I'll let Colin explain.
By Colin Hung (@Colin_Hung)
Last week I had the privilege of attending the 2014 annual HIMSS conference in Orlando Florida. Every year, I’m amazed and inspired by all the innovative people, products and projects that are presented or on display. This year was no exception.
One of the trending topics this year at HIMSS14 was patient engagement. For me this was particularly exciting. For years many of us on social media, especially those of us who participate on #hcsmca and other chats, have been advocating for more patient involvement in healthcare. Together we have helped to push the industry towards true patient-centred care and truly engaged patients.
In 2012 Leonard Kish (@leonardkish), a well-respected Healthcare IT consultant, wrote an amazing blog post, The Blockbuster Drug of the Century: An Engaged Patient, that showed how patient engagement could be the “blockbuster drug” of the year. In his post, Kish provides very compelling statistics:
- 19.74% reduction in hospital admissions
- 25.31% reduction in bed days of care
- 86% patient satisfaction
- $1,600 average cost per patient per year, compared to $13,121 for primary care and $77,745 for nursing home care
- 20% to 57% reduction in the need to be treated for the chronic diseases studied, including diabetes, COPD, heart failure, PTSD, and depression
As I was touring the HIMSS14 exhibit hall, I was reminded constantly of Kish’s post. Almost every vendor had some form of patient engagement technology. ..
I began to wonder about the definition of patient engagement and whether or not it would be worthwhile for the healthcare IT industry to have a common definition. It’s my belief that armed without a standardized definition or widely accepted market norm, we’ll continue to see poorly conceived engagement technologies that do little more than throw patient data onto a screen...Pat Rich (@cmaer) wrote an excellent Day 1 summary of #HIMSS14, The patient has no clothes, where he commented about how challenging patient engagement will be to operationalize:
“…while the majority of patients will discover errors in their own records when they evaluate them, there are few mechanisms or resources in place for doctors’ offices to correct those records … and many physicians are unprepared for the impact truly engaged patients will have on their workflow.”
I believe that almost everyone would agree that becoming more involved and engaged in your own health and healthcare is a good thing. But what does being an engaged patient really mean? Is it possible to come up with a single definition that we can all agree to? ...
Great observations. Indeed large volumes of interests..
Interests in both meanings of curiosity and of weight (in the sense of self-interest) are high in this case. After a history of telling patients what to do (see for instance http://sco.lt/7DGqp7 ), it will be no wonder that we really do want change to happen, but that is tricky. As Pat suggests: let’s do some research and in any case let’s write evaluations of any trial or pilot we undertake. It will not be easy surely.
That’s why I was thinking in building efforts to cooperation among protagonists. I gave a description of it here: http://bit.ly/1icTOvZ . I’m curious of what you think of it. By the way co-creation and co-creation of experience is an excellent method to process coordination in this.