November 10th, 2010 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion
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In my recent post on KevinMD, “Deeply Connect and Engage Your Patients With Empathy,” I write about how empathy is essential to help empower our patients: “It is with empathy that we can engage and empower our patients.”
Doctors and nurses are leaders in health care.
Being a great leader means having a clear vision, mission or goal. It means being committed, and knowing how to listen and communicate, but it involves much more. It’s about having heart, empathy, and an uplifting spirit.
I value and respect a well written post by Thomas Goetz, author of The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine recently published on KevinMD, “How can doctors successfully engage their patients?” Goetz writes about “Five things they should seek to give every patient, strategies to tap the most underutilized resource in medicine, their patient,” however I feel the most critical ingredient is missing, empathy.
Empathy
It is with empathy that we can engage and empower our patients. With empathy and heart we can help our patients feel good, valued and respected. Empathy allows us to engage and empower our patients to take charge of their health and well-being. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
October 26th, 2010 by Jennifer Shine Dyer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Research
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When it comes to understanding medical information, even the most sophisticated patient may not be “smarter than a fifth grader.”
In one of the largest studies of the links between health literacy and poor health outcomes, involving 14,000 patients with type 2 diabetes, researchers at the University of California San Francisco and Kaiser Permanente found that more than half the patients reported problems learning about their condition and 40 percent needed help reading medical materials. The patients with limited health literacy were 30 to 40 percent more likely to experience hypoglycemia — dangerously low blood sugar that can be caused if medications are not taken as instructed — than those with an adequate understanding of medical information.
Now, federal and state officials are pushing public health professionals, doctors, and insurers to simplify the language they use to communicate with the public in patient handouts, medical forms, and health websites. More than two-thirds of the state Medicaid agencies call for health material to be written at a reading level between the fourth and sixth grades.
A new federal program called the Health Literacy Action Plan is promoting simplified language nationwide. And some health insurers, doctors’ practices, and hospitals have begun using specialized software that scans documents looking for hard-to-understand words and phrases and suggests plain-English replacements. Read more »
October 14th, 2010 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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When patients and doctors communicate effectively, the patient has the best result. Not every doctor asks the critical question that can cinch a diagnosis. Yet good communication, coupled with good diagnostic skill can be worth more than $10,000 in tests and referrals to consultants.
You can help your doctor figure out what is going on by thinking and communicating like a physician. Whether you have a new problem or something that has been bothering you for a long time, here are some things that the doctor will want to know:
1. What are the symptoms? Be specific. Don’t just say “Sometimes I have a pain in my stomach.” Since more than 80 percent of health problems can be diagnosed based on information that you provide, make sure you can verbalize what you are feeling. Is it crampy? Does the pain come and go? Where is it located? Is it sharp or more like an ache? These specifics are giving information that your doctor can use as she thinks of the anatomy, physiology and causes of pain.
2. How long has it been going on? Try to be specific. “Awhile” doesn’t mean anything to a doctor. That could be two days or two years. Did it come on gradually or suddenly? There is a different cause for any symptom that is chronic (over several weeks) vs. sudden or acute. Did anything precede the symptoms? Travel, trauma, or life stress can point to different causes. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
October 14th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, News, Research
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Only 6.7 percent of office-based physicians routinely e-mailed patients about clinical information in 2008, according to an issue brief from the Center for Studying Health System Change.
Only 34.5 percent of office-based, ambulatory care physicians reported that information technology for communicating with patients about clinical issues via e-mail was available in their practice in 2008. Of that third, 19.5 percent routinely e-mailed patients, or 6.7 percent overall, while the rest were split between occasional use or non-use. The study sample was restricted to 4,258 office-based physicians and the response rate was 62 percent.
In contrast, twice as many physicians spent at least some time each work day e-mailing physicians and other clinicians. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
September 30th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
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Government healthcare reform efforts are picking up the pace to roll out new reimbursement and practice models for primary care.
Medicare is giving out $10 billion for pilot projects encouraging new models of primary care, including the patient-centered medical home. New Jersey just passed legislation to explore the patient-centered medical home. Now, Massachusetts, the early adopter of mandatory health insurance, is now ambitiously planning how to take on the fee-for-service reimbursement system and moving toward accountable care organizations. Under discussion are the scope of power for state regulators, what rules will apply to accountable care organizations, and how to get rid of the existing fee-for-service system.
Blogger and pediatrician Jay Parkinson, MD, MPH, comments about the “bureaucrats in Washington” that, “they’ve decided for doctors that we’ll get paid for strictly office visits and procedures when, in fact, being a good doctor is much, much more about good communication and solid relationships than the maximum volume of patients you can see in a given day.”
Now, it’s those same bureaucrats who are changing the system, trying to find a model that will accomplish just those goals. (CMS Web site, NJ Today, Boston Globe, KevinMD)
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
