Tag: patient engagement

How Meaningful Use Stage 3 Got Patient Engagement Wrong

Apr 5, 2015• 4

By JOSEPH KVEDAR, MD

Criteria for Stage 3 of meaningful use of EHRs were released recently and there is lots of controversy, as would have been predicted. One set of recommendations that is raising eyebrows is around patient engagement.

The recommendations include three measures of engagement, and providers would have to report on all three of them, but successfully meet thresholds on two.

Following on the Stage 2 measure of getting patients to view, download, and transmit their personal health data, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has proposed an increase from five to 25 percent.

The second measure requires that more than 35 percent of all patients seen by the provider or discharged from the hospital receive a secure message using the electronic health record’s (EHR) electronic messaging function or in response to a secure message sent by the patient (or the patient’s authorized representative).

The third measure calls for more than 15 percent of patients to contribute patient-generated health data or data from a non-clinical setting, to the EHR.

When Good Patient Engagement Goes Bad

Mar 8, 2015• 7

By HOLLY KORDA

The rush to implement patient portals to meet Meaningful Use Stage 2 deadlines has focused most attention on getting the technology up and running, and convincing patients and providers to move to shared communication online. Hospitals and health systems have implemented portals with the help of incentives from the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, and patients and providers have been migrating to them at a slow but steady pace.

I am one of the patients eager to see this move to transparency, and have been a user of my health system’s portal from the start. But I’m far from a happy customer and my experience leaves me scratching my head. Sure, I can get online without a problem, and I can read my results.

Recently, I read online that my results were “probably benign (not cancer)” and it would be important to follow up with retesting in six months. This news, delivered with no phone call or follow up from the hospital or my primary care provider, was disconcerting. The specter of cancer was anxiety producing, as it would be for many, especially with no clinical context for interpreting my test results.

I never received human follow up. When finally I reached someone at the hospital to set up an appointment for a retest, I asked about the portal and the message and was referred to the hospital IT Department. Hmmm…I wondered. What does this mean? Is this what patient engagement is all about?Continue reading…

Race, Ethnicity and Patient Engagement

Mar 7, 2015• 6

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

A few years ago, I was upgraded to First Class on a flight from California back to Chicago. Not long after I settled in, a tall, muscular man easily four inches taller than me walked up to my aisle seat in the first row and prepared to sit by the window.

I envisioned him spending hours hemmed in by the bulkhead and offered to switch places. We began to talk, and soon he shared that his seatmates often hesitate to engage him in conversation. Women and even some men will turn or stiffen in their seats in order to send a clear body-language message.

That’s what happens when you’re a large, physically imposing black guy. People make assumptions. When it comes to patient engagement, we often make assumptions, too.

We minimize the influence of race, gender and ethnicity, or we confuse it with socio-economic status. We assume that “people like us” have communication preferences like us. We downplay the doctor-patient relationship and overemphasize technology.

Race and Ethnicity Matter

In truth, race and ethnicity matter as much in medicine as in the rest of the society. For example, whites, African-Americans and Latinos share the same expectations of their physicians, a study in Health Services Research found, but “patients from different racial and ethnic groups report differing experiences…when using well-validated measurement tools.” Translation: the perception reflects reality.

Is There a Business Case For Patient Engagement?

Mar 4, 2015• 9

By DAVID CHASE

In the past, the AMA published an article questioning the merits of patient portals — the primary tool for engaging patients. Rob Tennant, senior policy adviser with the MGMA-ACMPE, the entity formed by the merger of the Medical Group Management Association and the American College of Medical Practice Executives raised the fundamental issue: “The business case just hasn’t been made.” I’ll attempt to make it.

Perhaps the best evidence of the business case is when industry visionaries/organizations/leaders such as HIMSS (the professional association for healthIT), Aetna and Kaiser Permanente have made significant investments in patient engagement.

I’ve excerpted a couple sections of Pam Dolan’s article on the topic to set context and then I will address the business case. The patient portal benefits assume that it’s more than a simplistic silo’ed patient portal tethered to an EHR since they are broadly available. [Disclosure: My company, Avado, is one many patient engagement companies.]

This is why I would call it the patient portal & relationship management system or simply patient relationship management system to distinguish it from traditional limited patient portals.

Do We Need Patient Relationship Management (PRM) Systems?

Dec 29, 2014• 5

By JORDAN SHLAIN MD

As a primary care doctor in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I have been searching for the holy grail of patient engagement for over 15 years. My journey began with alpha-numeric pager and a medical degree. I shared my pager number with my patients along with a pledge to call them back within 15-minutes, 24-hours a day. My communications evolved into email and texting, with the predicate that by enhancing communication, I could carefully guide my patients down the byzantine corridors of healthcare – with a high probability we could avoid mistakes – if they would agree to share the ownership of their treatment plan. My life’s work has been where the rubber meets the road; where doctors interface with patients: office, hospital, home or smartphone.

Technology has washed over almost every industry and transformed it, radically. Healthcare is on the precipice of destiny. The wave is here.

Over the past three decades healthcare has lurched from one existential crisis to another; often manifested by an acronym solution: HMO, ACO, PCMH, P4P, PQRS; each a valiant attempt to reign in costs and solve for aligning incentives. However, we can’t have hospitals, doctors, health systems and payers accountable to healthy outcomes if the 300,000,000 people (patients) are not paramount to the equation.

If you haven’t been paying close attention, ‘patient engagement’ is a white-hot topic in healthcare these days. It wasn’t sexy 5 years ago. In fact, at the keynote speech at HIMSS 13 (the national Health IT conference), it was announced that the “The blockbuster drug of the 21st century is Patient Engagement”.

Why We’re Getting Patient Engagement Backwards

Dec 4, 2014• 14

JOE SMITH, MD

There’s a mantra in healthcare right now to “drive patient engagement.” The idea is that informed and engaged patients play a crucial role in improving the quality of care our health system delivers. With the right information, these healthcare consumers will be more active participants in their care, select providers based on quality and value metrics, demand appropriate, high-quality, high-value services and choose treatment options wisely after a thorough process of shared decision-making.

This drive for patient engagement often fails to recognize one important truth: Our healthcare system inadvertently, yet potently, discourages engagement. It ignores the fact that the patient is already the most engaged person in healthcare. The patient bears the disease, the pain, the scar – and, ultimately, the bill. In our search for greater engagement, we must realize what the comic strip Pogo said years ago – “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Preparing for Updates to the Medicare Shared Savings Program

Nov 20, 2014• 3

By FARZAD MOSTASHARI, MD and TRAVIS BROOME

Later this month – perhaps as early as this week – the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is poised to release a proposed rule to update to the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). MSSP is the national program which allows providers to create ACOs, and it is the program under which Aledade ACOs operate. This will be the first update to the program in three years, and we expect there will be a great deal to unwrap once the rule is public (we also acknowledge that we are among the few who await publications of CMS rules with the anticipation of children on Christmas morning). I’m sure we’ll spend the day of the release tweeting our initial reactions — be sure to follow @Farzad_MD, @Travis_Broome, and @Aledade_ACO for those updates.

The new rule will contain a lot to unpack; but we believe that the decisions that CMS makes in 4 key areas will play a large role in whether participation in the program continues to be robust and whether the program succeeds in being the flag-bearer for new payment models.

Pay for Engagement: A New Framework for Physician Reimbursement

Nov 10, 2014• 26

By Ben Rosner, MD, Kyle Homstead & Jordan Shlain, MD

A thousand channels, and nothing’s on. “Patient engagement” has become an increasingly used buzzword in which healthcare finds itself awash. Yet little around patient engagement has been operationalized into any sort of enduring clinical reality. In part, this is due to the lack of convergence, until recently, of three major and arguably requisite ingredients: 1. A practical, operational definition of patient engagement that allows us to measure it continuously and treat it just as we do a vital sign, 2. A manner by which to connect the two most important parties in the patient engagement equation -‐ the patient and physician – between visits in a way that is clinically compatible and meaningful, and 3. An incentive that helps honor and reward a key missing ingredient – the physician -‐ for the time needed to promote engagement directly with his or her patients. We will discuss these three elements and highlight two current pilot studies that are beginning to break through these barriers.Continue reading…

Jessie Gruman: Tribute to a Tightrope Walker

Jul 17, 2014• 6

By Michael Millenson

When I heard that Jessie Gruman had died, that her powerful voice on behalf of patients had been stilled and gone silent years too soon, I thought of Phillipe Petite, the high-wire artist who famously tread a cable strung between the two World Trade Center buildings back in 1974.

Jessie’s balancing act did not take place on so visible a stage, but her death-defying dance equally amazed those who knew, worked with, respected and loved her.

On the one side, she was persistently pulled down by cancer. There was Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1973 when she was just 20, setting the stage for repercussions of treatment that would dog her ever after: cervical cancer eight years later; colon cancer in 2004; and a diagnosis of stomach cancer in 2011 that returned after a too-brief hiatus. There was also pericarditis, a dangerous heart condition.

Counterbalancing that burden was the uplift of a woman whose “bouts” with cancer shaped, but never defined her. She was a social psychologist who was an early part of work on the chronic care model; the founder of a policy and research center dedicated to empowering patients in health care and in health; a prolific writer and author of a landmark book on what to do with a diagnosis of serious disease; and for many, a personal inspiration.

On the morning of July 14, Jessie finally fell off the tightrope, as we all must eventually do, dying at home. She was 60 years old.

You can’t really understand the outpouring of affection, appreciation and aching loss Jessie inspired just by browsing her impressive bio. She was sharp and funny, with wry asides directed at any pretension exhibited by allies or adversaries alike.

However, Jessie did far more than dish and dis. She was a superlative builder; of an organization, yes, but more importantly, of a body of work that prompted government policymakers and uncounted health care organizations to pay greater attention to the unmet needs of patients. She also reached out directly to fellow patients to help. In all these activities, she married intellectual rigor and careful attention to evidence – techie trendiness, for example, did not impress her – with emotional honesty. Jessie spoke what often goes unspoken, candidly acknowledging how horribly scary and alone it feels to be seriously ill.

As she wrote in her book, AfterShock: What to Do When the Doctor Gives You – or Someone You Love –a Devastating Diagnosis:

Every time I have received bad health news, I have felt like a healthy person who has been accidentally drop-kicked into a foreign country: I don’t know the language, the culture is unfamiliar, I have no idea what is expected of me, I have no map and I desperately want to find my way home.

Jessie told one interviewer: “I want people to know how to take care of themselves and pay attention to the urgency of their situation even when their heart is broken.” Later, she repeated that theme in an article for Health Affairs that called for policies to support patients and their families in their time of distress.Continue reading…

Be Prepared: Beyond the Alphabet Soup of Value-Based Care

Jun 19, 2014• 7

By JOSH SEIDMAN

ACO, MSSP, BPCI, HIE, CQM, P4P, PCMH, yadda, yadda, yadda … The litany of acronyms describing changing P&D (excuse me, payment and delivery) models can sometimes numb the senses. But it would be unwise to allow the latest healthcare jargon to lull you into an AIC—an acronym-induced coma, for which I believe there is a new ICD-10 code—because the world might look a lot different when you snap out of it.

Little debate exists that the U.S. healthcare system needs to transition from turnstile medicine to value-based care, from a predominantly fee-for-service payment model to one that emphasizes accountability for population health. This, of course, is not a novel concept, so the biggest challenges relate to how we get there. As many skeptics have argued, the same dynamics have existed before – unsustainable healthcare costs and too little value for our money – so the Talmudic question arises: Why is this era different from all other eras?

EHRs have changed the playing field completely
Reporting of comparative performance is now embedded into the delivery system
We understand the centrality of patient engagement
Today’s incentives reward greater accountability and value

There are some fundamental differences compared to, for example, the environment that existed in the 1990s when some experts believed managed care would change the underlying cost structure of the health care system. A majority of providers now have implemented electronic health records (EHRs) and an increasing number are – or soon will be as a result of Stage 2 “Meaningful Use” – able to exchange clinical data across network and vendor boundaries. The expectation that quality measurement will be used for holding providers accountable has taken root and most health care organizations regularly submit standardized performance data to public and private payers, purchasers and independent accrediting bodies. Providers increasingly recognize that their success in population health management relates to their ability to effectively engage with their patients in collaborative relationships.