Tag: Patient-centered care

Accountable Care Organizations Can Change Everything, But Only If We Get the Definition Right

Mar 20, 2013• 12

By Jaan Sidorov, MD

Writing in the March 20 issue of JAMA, Drs. Douglas Noble and Lawrence Casalino say that supporters of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are all muddled over “population health.”

This correspondent says the article is what is muddled and that the readers of JAMA deserve better.

According to the authors, after the Affordable Care Act launched the Medicare Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), their stated purpose has morphed from Health-System Ver. 2.0 controlling the chronic care costs of their assigned patients to Health System Ver. 3.0 collaboratively addressing “population health” for an entire geography.

Between the here of “improving chronic care” and the there of “population health,” Drs Noble and Casalino believe ACOs are going to have to confront the additional burdens of preventive care, social services, public health, housing, education, poverty and nutrition. That makes the authors wonder if the term “population health” in the context of ACOs is unclear. If so, that lack of clarity could ultimately lead naive politicians, policymakers, academics and patients to be disappointed when ACOs start reporting outcomes that are limited to chronic conditions.

Why Patient Engagement Really Does Matter and Why So Many People Are Getting It Wrong

Mar 12, 2013• 64

By Rob Lamberts, MD

“Patient engagement.”

What is “Patient Engagement?” It sounds like a season of “The Bachelor” where a doctor dates hot patients. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was. After all, patient engagement is hot; it’s the new buzz phrase for health wonks. There was a even an entire day at the recent HIMSS conference dedicated to “Patient engagement.” I think the next season of “The Bachelor” should feature a wonk at HIMSS looking for a wonkettes to love.

Here’s how the Internets define “Patient engagement”:

The Get Well Network (with a smiley face) calls it: “A national health priority and a core strategy for performance improvement.”
Leonard Kish refers to it as “The Blockbuster Drug of the Century” (it narrowly beat out Viagra) – HT to Dave Chase.
Steve Wilkins refers to it as “The Holy Grail of Health Care” (it also narrowly beat out Viagra) – HT to Kevin MD.
On the HIMSS Patient Engagement Day, the following topics were discussed:

-How to make Patients Your Partners in Satisfying Meaningful Use Stage 2 Objectives; Case Studies in Patient Engagement, session #64;
-Review Business Cases for Implementing a Patient-Centered Communication Strategy and Building Patient 2.0, session #84;: and
-Engaging People in Health Through Consumer-Facing Devices and Tools, session #102.

So then, “patient engagement” is:

-a strategy
-a drug
-a grail (although I already have a grail)
-a “meaningful use” objective
-something that requires a business case
-something that requires “consumer-facing devices and tools” (I already have one of those too).

What Apple Can Teach Health Care About Thinking Different

Mar 4, 2013• 18

By James Rickert, MD

Apple Incorporated has grown to be among the most valuable and most envied companies on earth. Its products are ubiquitous and beloved by many of their users. Last year, the firm generated nearly $26 billion in profits on revenues of $108 billion. When physicians and others working in health care discuss the lessons that the medical establishment can learn from these types of corporate successes, the conversations almost always revolve around the promise of information technologies, such as electronic record keeping or electronic prescription writing, and the need for increased use of these in medical practice. While these technologies are important, the most valuable lesson from Apple’s success is a demonstration of the power of empathy and the subsequent need for health care providers to emotional connect with our patients.

It is widely known that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computer in Steve Jobs’ garage; what is not as widely known is that they quickly brought in a third partner, Mike Markkula, to join and guide the company. He began by writing a one page statement entitled “The Apple Marketing Philosophy”. This philosophy stressed only three key components of bedrock company principles; the first and most important was empathy.

Should Your Review of Your Doctor Be Taken Seriously?

Feb 3, 2013• 3

By Kent Bottles, MD

Recent articles highlight challenges with holding providers accountable for the care they deliver. One of the major thrusts of efforts to transform the American healthcare delivery system has been to become more patient-centered and to allow patients to provide feedback that matters.

Emblematic of this is the emphasis on patient involvement in the final rules for the Shared Savings Program accountable care organizations (ACO).

Echoing former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Director Don Berwick’s plea on the behalf of patients (“Nothing about us without us”), the ACO final rules emphasize patient engagement in governance, quality improvement and the individual doctor/patient interaction.

Michael Millenson’s white paper provides a summary of the patient empowerment movement.

The development of the patient activation measure (PAM) and the Center for Advancing Health’s 43 engagement behaviors has allowed us to study patient-centeredness with more specificity. Studies have shown that activated patients are less likely to choose surgical interventions, have better functional status and satisfaction, are more likely to perform self-management behaviors, and report higher medication adherence rates.

Healthcare policy experts and payers have embraced the argument outlined above, and patients’ reports of their satisfaction with both physicians and hospitals have increasingly been used to calculate financial rewards.

Health Care Innovations Hiding in Plain Sight

Aug 28, 2012• 1

By Maureen Bisognano and Charles Kenney

While the nation has been focused on the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, innovations in hospitals and physician practices far from Capitol Hill have been triggering an historic transformation of our health care system. Propelled by a mix of urgency and vision, innovators at hospitals, physician groups and companies are remaking American health care by demonstrating that more effective and affordable care is achievable quite apart from statutory changes in Washington.

These organizations are working to achieve the Triple Aim: improve the health of the population; enhance the patient experience of care (including quality, access, and reliability); and reduce, or at least control, the per capita cost of care. This approach, developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, is a sharp break with the traditional focus on single encounters with patients within the strict walls of health care delivery, typically addressing only the most immediate problems.
Continue reading…

Finally, Quality We Really Care About

Jun 27, 2012• 15

By FARAZ AHMAD and THOMAS TSANG

Patient-centered care and patient engagement have become central to the vision of a high value health delivery system. The delivery system is evolving from a fee-for-service transactional payment model to a value-based purchasing model using outcome data and quality improvement and attainment. The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and private payers have spurred delivery redesign of networks that focuses on a set of clinical quality measures and patient care experiences along with efficiency measures.

However, the questions we ultimately really care are: “Did I get better? Am I healthier?”

With the advent of Facebook, PatientsLikeMe® and Avado, consumers and patients are sharing their healthcare experiences openly with their support system and strangers with similar illnesses. Our delivery system has yet to leverage the power of patient/consumer reported data in feeding back to care deliverers in the quality improvement cycle.

Clinical quality measures have traditionally consisted of process or surrogate measures and centered on providers and hospitals. As we move toward a system based on value, the measurement system must shift as well. Part of this movement will be utilizing outcomes directly reported from patients and their caretakers and incorporating these outcomes into quality improvement initiatives and payment models. The widespread adoption of standardized and validated patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs) would accelerate the development of a patient-centered health system. However, new standards; patient-friendly, digitally-enabled instruments; secure portals; and more research will be required to facilitate adoption.

Patient Power

Jun 7, 2012• 8

By Barbra Rabson

What happens when consumers are able to compare the performance of primary care physicians in their state using Consumer Reports, the magazine that’s so highly regarded for its ratings of thousands of products and services we all use every day? Well, for the first time ever, we’re about to find out.

A special Massachusetts version of July’s Consumer Reports magazine will feature a report entitled “How Does Your Doctor Compare?” along with a 24-page insert that includes ratings of nearly 500 primary care physician practices from across the state. The ratings are based on data from a comprehensive patient experience survey conducted by Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP), a coalition of consumers, physicians, hospitals, insurers, employers, government agencies, and researchers. The physician ratings report is also available online at www.mhqp.org.

In recent years, there’s been a lot of talk in the health care community about the importance of consumer empowerment and patient-centered care. This experimental collaboration between MHQP and Consumer Reports, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality program, helps move theory into practice, and will test some key assumptions about the value of transparency in the effort to improve the health care system. In many respects, ratings of primary care physicians are not new to Massachusetts. We at MHQP have been reporting the results of patient surveys and clinical quality data since 2006 and these reports have had a positive effect on health care in our state. But let’s face it, Consumer Reports adds a whole new dimension to the notion of transparency. Not surprisingly, their involvement has been met with both excitement and some trepidation in the physician community.Continue reading…

Without Patient-Centered Health Plans, It’s the Same Tired Script

Jun 6, 2012• 13

By Joshua Archambault

As the next act of the Massachusetts health care drama plays out on Beacon Hill, the same characters return to the stage with a tired script. The ostensible hero of the production, the patient, is left to watch the tragedy from the back row.

Legislation being debated on Beacon Hill ignores patient-centered health plans and health savings accounts, or HSAs, which are lower-premium insurance plans that direct pre-tax dollars into a bank account to cover an individual’s current health care and save money for future medical expenses. An HSA is the most direct way to engage patients in the health system. They cover out-of-pocket medical, dental, and vision expenses, are fully portable, and owned by individuals for their entire lives.

Unlike the self-interested solutions of insurers, providers, and government, HSAs are a proven way to contain the cost of care.

Nationwide, 11.4 million people of all ages and income levels purchase patient-centered plans, up over 250 percent from 2006, when they were created. Among HSA account holders, fully half earn less than $60,000; almost three-quarters have children; and about half are over 40.

Safeway, one of America’s largest supermarket chains, rolled out a patient-centered plan in 2006; per capita health care spending shrank 13 percent, and costs remained flat for four consecutive years.

Safeway’s plans have reduced employee obesity and smoking rates to roughly 30 percent below national averages. This health dividend is priceless as 70 percent of health care costs are directly related to lifestyle decisions.

Slow Medicine

May 11, 2012• 5

By Danielle Ofri

I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, but sometime in the past two decades, the practice of medicine was insidiously morphed into the delivery of health care. If you aren’t sure of the difference between the two, then “God’s Hotel” is the book for you. It’s an engaging book that chronicles this fin-de-siecle phenomenon from the perspective of San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital, the last almshouse in the United States.

Dr. Victoria Sweet, a general internist, came to Laguna Honda for a two-month stint more than 20 years ago and ended up staying. Laguna Honda was home to the patients who had nowhere else to go, who were too sick, too poor, too disenfranchised to make it on their own. The vast open wards housed more than a thousand patients, some for years. Laguna Honda was off the grid, and this, Sweet discovered, was to the benefit of the patients.

Unencumbered by HMOs and insurance companies, the doctors and nurses practiced a very old-fashioned type of medicine, “slow medicine,” as Sweet terms it. There was ample time for doctors and nurses to get to know their patients, and ample time for patients to convalesce. Many a written-off patient recovered within the comforting, unhurried arms of Laguna Honda.

What the Supreme Court (and You) Won’t Hear About Health Reform

Mar 23, 2012• 13

By Michael L. Millenson

Pay attention when the pundits and legal poohbahs start prattling about the “severability” of the individual mandate provision that’s the focus of the much-anticipated Supreme Court hearings on the constitutionality of health reform. What the partisan obloquy about “Obamacare” too often obscures is that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is mostly about patient protection and affordable care.

Case in point: the law’s landmark provisions regarding “patient-centeredness.”

Is anyone against patient-centeredness? Those elitists at the Institute of Medicine, drawing on work by suspect Massachusetts liberals at the Picker Institute, defined patient-centeredness back in 2001 (when George W. Bush was president) this way: “Care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.” The IOM also made patient-centeredness one of six aims for U.S. health care.

Wait. Couldn’t Ron Paul and the Libertarians endorse that same individual-centric definition, which also has roots in religious teachings? (Hey, the original Tea Party was in Boston.)

If you’re a free-market conservative, patient-centeredness fits the concept of health care as a marketplace filled with consumers and providers. Interestingly, as early as 1974, under another Republican president, those IOM elitists endorsed publishing outcomes measures “so consumers can be informed of the relative effectiveness of various health providers and make their choices accordingly.”