Tag: patient engagement

Open Notes: Is Sharing Mental Health Notes with Patients a Good Idea?

Apr 11, 2014• 13

By MICHAEL KAHN, MD

Would allowing patients to read their mental health notes provide more benefits than risks?

In a recent article in JAMA my colleagues and I argue that it would. While transparent medical records are gaining favor in primary care settings throughout the country through the OpenNotes initiative, there has been reluctance to allow patients to see what their treaters say about their mental health issues. While this reluctance is understandable and deserves careful consideration, we suggest that several benefits could result from patients reading their mental health notes.

First of all, accuracy would be enhanced by allowing patients to cross-check what their clinicians say about their symptoms, medication doses, and so forth. Second, allowing patients to review assessments and treatment decisions privately might help to promote a richer dialogue between patient and clinician. Third, patients might learn that their clinician sees them more as a complete person, rather than as a collection of symptoms.

Many patients silently fear that their treater “will think I’m crazy/whining/lazy/boring”; seeing in print that the treater does not see them that way—and in fact recognizes and documents their strengths—can be an enormous relief and might therefore enhance the therapeutic alliance.

Clinicians have their own worries about transparent mental health notes that must be considered. Will patients feel objectified by the medical language commonly used in documentation? Will they break off treatment if they don’t like what they read? Will too much time be spent wrangling over details of what has been documented? Will vulnerable patients be psychologically harmed by reading their notes? Although our article briefly addresses these issues, only a trial of transparent mental health notes will provide the data needed to assess them.

Such a trial has just begun at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Culminating many months of careful planning by my colleagues in the ambulatory psychiatry clinic, the Social Work department, as well as the OpenNotes team, we began a pilot project of transparent notes in our psychiatry clinic on March 1. So far almost all clinicians have chosen to participate in the project, and have identified 10% of their caseloads to be included. It’s too early to gauge results yet, but we hope to more fully evaluate the effects of making mental health notes fully transparent to our patients.

Michael W. Kahn, MD is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Medical Faculty Physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC).

* Patients Not Included

Oct 25, 2013• 22

By LESLIE KERNISAN, MD

A few weeks ago, I went for the first time to Stanford’s Medicine X conference. It’s billed as a conference that brings a “broad, academic approach to understanding emerging technologies with the potential to improve health and advance the practice of medicine.”

Well, I went, I saw, and I even briefly presented (in a workshop on using patient-generated data).

And I am now writing to tell you about the most important innovations that I learned about at Medicine X (MedX).

They were not the new digital health technologies, even though we heard about many interesting new tools, systems, and apps at the conference, and I do believe that leveraging technology will result in remarkable changes in healthcare.

Nor were they related to social media, ehealth, or telehealth, even though all of these are rapidly growing and evolving, and will surely play important roles in the healthcare landscape of the future.

No. The most remarkable innovations at MedX related to the conference itself, which was unlike any other academic conference I’ve been to. Specifically, the most important innovations were:

Patients present to tell their stories, both on stage and in more casual conversational settings such as meals.
Patient participation in brainstorming healthcare solutions and in presenting new technologies. MedX also has an ePatient Advisors group to help with the overall conference planning.

These innovations, along with frequent use of storytelling techniques, video, and music, packed a powerful punch. It all kept me feeling engaged and inspired during the event, and left me wishing that more academic conferences were like this.

These innovations point the way to much better academic conferences. Here’s why:

The power of patient presence

I wasn’t surprised to see lots of patients at Medicine X, because I knew that the conference has an e-patient scholars program, and that many patients would be presenting. I also knew that the director of MedX, Dr. Larry Chu, is a member of the Society of Participatory Medicine. (Disclosure: I’ve been a member of SPM since last December.)

I was, on the other hand, surprised by how powerful it was to have patients on stage telling their stories.

How could it make such a difference? I am, after all, a practicing physician who spends a lot of time thinking about the healthcare experience of older adults and their caregivers.

But it did make a difference. I found myself feeling more empathetic, and focused on the patient and family perspective. And I felt more inspired to do better as a physician and as a healthcare problem-solver.

In short, having patients tell their stories helped me engage with the conference presentations in a more attentive and meaningful way.

Now, some will surely be tempted to wave this off as a gauzy touchy-feely experience that is peculiar to the fruit-cakes of the Bay Area; a nice conference touch that isn’t materially important to the purpose of an academic conference.

Could Doctors Have Something to Learn From Designers?

Sep 15, 2013• 2

By JOYCE LEE, MD

Levels of Empathy for the User (i.e. the Patient) for Designers compared with Doctors.

Joyce Lee, MD is a pediatrician, diabetes specialist, and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. She blogs about design and healthcare at joycelee.tumblr.com.

Can Social Media Really Influence Health Behaviors? A Small Clinical Trial Argues The Answer Is Yes.

Sep 14, 2013• 4

By Jaan Sidorov, MD

Thanks to the technologic allure of iPhones replacing stethoscopes, apps substituting for doctors and electronic information substituting for having to actually talk to patients, this thoroughly modern correspondent is all about medical-social media.

Think Facebook for the flu. Twitter for tinnitus. Egads, listen to the typical consultant, pundit or futurist and it’s easy to believe that we’re on the verge of a silicon-based health care revolution.

But then reality intrudes and some skeptic somewhere always asks about the bang for the buck, the juice for the squeeze, the return for the investment. It’s a good question.

For something of an answer, consider the results appearing in a recently published randomized clinical trial by researchers at UCLA. Over a 4 month period, “at risk persons” were recruited for a clinical research trial with on-line ads (Facebook banners, Craigslist, for example) as well as announcements in community settings and venues. Once subjects met the inclusion criteria and had a unique Facebook account, they were randomly assigned to one of two treatment arms.

One treatment arm used a closed Facebook group to coach persons about their at risk condition. The other treatment arm similarly used Facebook to coach persons about general health improvement. Lay “Peer Leaders,” who were given a three hour training session on “epidemiology of the condition or general health subjects and ways of using Facebook to discuss health and stigmatizing topics,” were assigned to lead the groups.

Peer Leaders attempted to reach out to their assigned group persons with messaging, chats and wall posts. Once the link was established, the relationship in the intervention group included communication about prevention and treatment of the condition. At the end of 1, 2 and three months of the study, participants completed a variety of surveys.

Results?

57 individuals were in the control general health group and 55 were in the condition coaching group. According to the surveys, intervention patients were ultimately statistically significantly more likely to agree to condition testing (44%) than the control patients (20%). Because there were few participants, the modest decrease in actual tests or risk behaviors were not statistically meaningful.

This correspondent’s take:

While this was a small study, this is the first time that I have seen reasonable proof that social media by itself can move the behavior needle. On the other hand, this did not result in a patient engagement stampede toward better care or hard clinical outcomes. A majority of participants (56%) did not appear to benefit. Nonetheless, the results do support the inclusion of Facebook-style closed group social media in the suite of population health management services.

Patient Engagement: On Metrics and Meaning

Sep 12, 2013• 28

By Leslie Kernisan, MD

What is patient engagement?

Everyone agrees that it’s a good thing, and that we healthcare providers should be fostering it.

How to do so, however, depends on just what you believe patient engagement means.

As Dan Munro recently pointed out, the term “patient engagement” is a hot buzz phrase, and – in the best tradition of such phrases – it’s amorphous enough and appealing enough to mean…just about anything.

Provided that it that makes us feel good about healthcare, of course. Better yet, provided that it casts our favorite healthcare approaches in a favorable light. (Rob Lamberts nicely summarizes some angles of the term here.)

I actually rather liked Munro’s post, titled “Patient engagement: Blockbuster Drug or Snake Oil?” until he got to this part: “We now have some very real metrics around what constitutes real patient engagement and Leonard highlighted two impressive examples.” He goes on to point to two studies of care coordination for chronic illness — one at Kaiser and the other at the VA – and summarizes some key improvements in outcomes.

At Kaiser, they included things like decreased mortality rates and fewer emergencies, as well as improved cholesterol screenings and more people meeting cholesterol goals. With the VA’s Telehealth program, hospital days were reduced and patient satisfaction was 86%. (BTW, I had a VA primary care clinic from 2006-2010, and several of my patients were in Telehealth.)

These are indeed nice results. Still, somehow they didn’t impress me as constituting “real patient engagement.” They seemed more like “real population health management, facilitated by teams, care coordination, communication infrastructure, and organized protocols.”

Shouldn’t real patient engagement mean more than this?

Defining patient engagement

Here’s my current take:

Supporting patient engagement means fostering a fruitful collaboration in which patients and clinicians work together to help the patient progress towards mutually agreed-upon health goals.

Creating Conditions for Humanity in Hospitals

Aug 25, 2013• 15

By Leslie Kernisan, MD

Why aren’t people in hospitals more attentive to the needs of patients?

In a recent post, Dr. Ashish Jha raises this issue as he relates his own story of coming to an ED with a very painful dislocated shoulder. Unsurprisingly, prompt treatment of his pain was deferred while staff diligently completed registration, sent him for an xray, and waited for a physician to see him.

On the bike path where Jha took his initial tumble, people went out of their way to respond to his injury with attention and concern. But as he lay moaning on a gurney in the hospital corridors, waiting for an xray and not yet treated for pain, people avoided his eyes and even walked by a little faster.

What gives? Why aren’t people in the hospital more empathetic and attentive? Is this a “wonderful people, bad system” issue?

In reflecting on his experience, Jha remarks that people seem to leave their humanity at the door when they arrive at the hospital for work, and posits that we get desensitized to suffering. He notes that some workers were able to “break out of that trap,” and responded to him more empathetically when he directly solicited their help and attention.

“It is the job of healthcare leaders to create a culture where we retain our humanity despite the constant exposure to patients who are suffering,” writes Jha.

Culture change is necessary but not sufficient

Culture is important. Yes I’ll admit that I’m usually a bit skeptical when I hear of a plan to tackle a problem through culture change. In my own experience, this has consisted of leaders trying to “create culture” by describing to front-line staff what they should be doing, and repeatedly exhorting them to do it. (And maybe giving out gold stars to those who do it.)

This, of course, is never enough. Talking the talk does not mean people start to walk the walk, especially if the walk involves a slog uphill rather than an easier stroll down a path of lesser resistance.

If we – whether healthcare leaders or just concerned citizens who want to see healthcare improve – really want healthcare workers to demonstrate more compassion and empathy while on the job, then here is what we need to do:

We should take seriously the task of understanding what might be interfering with this compassion and engagement. This means not only studying workflow, but also the behavioral psychology of individuals as well as groups.
We should then be serious about creating the conditions that would allow regular human beings to reliably produce the desired behaviors.

Why it can be hard to help people in the hospital

What interferes with showing compassion and engagement? In reading Jha’s piece, I reflected on my own hospital days. Here are the obstacles that I remember, and the impact on me.

Nurses Will Play a Vital Role in the Enactment of the Affordable Care Act

Aug 14, 2013• 12

By Kathleen Potempa

While in the care of a nurse, patients have a champion: a health care professional working to assure timely tests, procedures, and rehabilitative activities that foster better and faster recovery. Prior to discharge from a health facility, it is often the nurse who assesses a patient’s self-care ability (or access to home caregivers) to provide the type of treatments and medications needed to prevent relapse or even costly return to a hospital.

Responsibility for optimal recovery is of course shared by all health team members, but the unique position of nurses at the patient’s bedside (literally and metaphorically) gives us many avenues to influence care and cure.

Though nurses already play a central role in cost containment, care quality, and patient safety, current trends in nursing education have us poised for even greater contributions. That’s because good baccalaureate and graduate programs in nursing increasingly incorporate quality improvement in care settings. Through attention to ‘microsystem’ processes, we work toward better outcomes not only for individuals but also for health systems as a whole. Nursing prepares leaders, administrators, and researchers who can improve care processes and related analytics around outcomes and cost.

The coming enactment of reforms included in the Affordable Care Act will increase the opportunities for nurses to make both individuals and care systems as healthy as they can possibly be. Patient communication, preventive care, and navigation across the vast medical landscape are well-established foci in the curriculum at major U.S. nursing schools. These areas of expertise could not be more essential now that new insurance options and Medicaid expansion are bringing millions of individuals into a national primary care system already taxed by provider shortages.

Nurse navigators and transitional care nurses are stepping up to central coordinating roles within Accountable Care Organizations—the model wherein participating health care providers are collectively responsible for their enrollees’ care, and also can share savings resulting from efficiency and improvements in that care.

Nursing as a profession actively engages in leading efforts to improve patient care and reduce costs; this is integral to our professional values, knowledge base, and skills. We have earned the trust of Americans (we’re voted most ethical and honest in Gallup polls), and will use that trust, along with our health promotion expertise, to communicate with patients about the best prevention, timely care, and most efficient ways to get needed help as they navigate together through America’s evolving system of care.

Kathleen Potempa, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the Dean of the University of Michigan School of Nursing and a national leader in health promotion, nursing education, and research. Dr. Potempa is the immediate past president of the American Associate of Colleges of Nursing and recently concluded a four-year term on the NIH’s National Institute of Nursing Research Council.

Why a New Healthcare Technology Designed to Cut Costs and Increase Efficiency Probably Won’t Put Anesthesiologists Out of Work

Jul 30, 2013• 5

By Shirie Leng, MD

The Wall Street Journal recently contacted me regarding an upcoming article on Sedasys, the new gadget that is supposed to be able to infuse propofol by computer while monitoring vital signs.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written previously, you’ll know that I am NOT a big proponent of technology as a means of “improving” patient care. To me, the more technology you put between the patient and the caregiver, the less medicine you’re practicing, and the more data-entry and computer programming you’re doing.

Sedasys is designed specifically to administer propofol. Propofol is a milk-like substance that produces a range of effects from sedation to general anesthesia. For sedation you just use less, for general anesthesia you use more. Its very quick onset and very quick recovery make it great for outpatient sedation. It has to be given in a continuous drip because its effect goes away so fast. GI docs love it because its so effective. I suspect they also love it because propofol comes with an anesthesiologist to give it.

The only problem is the one Michael Jackson encountered: it has this pesky side effect of causing you to stop breathing. And you can’t tell by looking at a person how much will sedate them and how much will make them stop breathing.

A little old lady with a million health problems might sedate at, say, 40 mg and stop breathing at 60 mg, while an 19-year-old could probably take 150 mg and still be fighting you. It’s not necessarily weight-based.

Providers Are Held Accountable. Why Aren’t Technology Vendors?

Jul 26, 2013• 22

By Jordan Dolin

As healthcare shifts from fee-for-service to fee-for-value, hospitals and physicians are increasingly being held accountable for outcomes by the government, payers and patients. Historically, provider organizations only had to meet performance criteria to earn a pay-for-performance bonuses or hospital certification, but with the arrival of Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), Meaningful Use and other programs, payment is now based on to quality of care rather than quantity of services.

Health information technology (HIT) systems are able to track physician actions and measure outcomes down to the individual patient level and allow organizations to closely monitor the quality levels of a given physician. These same tools should be able to monitor the performance of the vendors who are there to support these clinicians. With patient engagement solutions, for example, vendors claim they can help improve HCAHPS scores, treatment adherence, patient outcomes, and reduce costs, but have no evidence to back it up.

Vendors should be willing to commit to their patient engagement promises, present proof showing improved outcomes and face some financial risk for failing to deliver.

Global accountability

Since patient engagement was included in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Solutions’ Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records program, it has become a popular buzzword. Every HIT vendor claims to offer tools to assist providers with this important clinical quality issue, but no one is holding anyone accountable.

The Affordable Care Act Will Fail Without Patient Engagement

Jul 22, 2013• 24

By Adrian Gropper, MD

What’s behind the recent EHR public relations blitz and our passionate debate in The Health Care Blog? It’s fear for the Affordable Care Act’s future. Oh, the ACA can weather political challenge in the short term, but in the long run, only health cost containment will matter. EHRs are the ship that institutions are counting on to navigate payment reform and, from the institutional perspective, physicians and patients are just along for the ride. From the citizen perspective however, cost containment will be seen as rationing unless patients and physicians are appropriately engaged in the most costly decisions.

The impact of yet more regulations, such as Stage 3 Meaningful Use, could be too late to save the ACA. For now, the administration and those of us that hope the ACA succeeds must work to shift EHR vendors and their institutional customers toward patient engagement using the tools of policy guidance, public relations and federal procurement.

First, a crash course in health economics. If you have a few minutes, read Accountable Care Organizations: Can We Have Our Cake and Eat It Too? by Jessica L. Mantel. Otherwise, just struggle through the next two paragraphs summarizing why EHRs are the lynchpin of health reform via the ACA.

Cost containment requires either cost controls or a shift away from fee-for-service payment. The ACA is based on accountable care as an alternative to fee-for-service. Accountable Care Organization (ACO) is shorthand for the new health care payments regime. By paying ACO institutions instead of individual service providers, health insurance companies and Medicare provide direct economic incentives to reduce waste, lower costs and, if we’re not careful, withhold needed care. An ACO is by definition an organization or institutional construct.

The EHR is is not the Jedi knight’s lightsaber, it is an institutional tool designed to bind the individual service providers into the Federation’s collective. Not surprisingly, patient engagement is an afterthought.