November 20th, 2011 by Emergiblog in Health Policy, Opinion
No Comments »
Looks like Mr. Administrator has some ‘splainin’ to do!
And I suggest he be straight with my colleagues, because a nurse can sense BS before it is even spoken.
I am not in management, and I never will be.
No, I am one of the “rank and file.” And right now, this member of the “rank and file” is hotter than hell.
**********
What set me off?
A comment in a post on the Health Leaders Media website, entitled Top 5 Challenges Facing Nursing in 2012. The article, written for nursing management, refers to nurses as “rank and file caregivers” and disparages their understanding of the importance of the “patient experience” to reimbursement: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Emergiblog*
October 27th, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Opinion
No Comments »
Health care professionals are a cynical lot. We joke about the “fad or buzz word of the month”…usually some vague concept heralded by the powers on high. Our job is to promote the idea…knowing full well that the “next big thing” is probably right around the corner.
Take “Patient-Centered”…it sure feels like a buzz word. I suspect most hospital and physician executives, and their ad agency partners, would agree. But this time things are very different.
Why Hospitals and Physicians Should Get Serious About Patient-Centered Care
Reason #1 – Patients Are Starting To Discover That Their Doctors & Hospitals Are Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
September 1st, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Health Policy, Opinion
No Comments »
The first experience patients are likely to have with your hospital is not in an ER visit or inpatient stay. A patient’s first experience will most likely be in one of your primary-care physician offices. That because a person is 10 times more likely during a year to end up in the physician’s office for a routine visit than they are to require an overnight hospital stay.
As a hospital marketer or patient experience officer this should raise an interesting question. How well do your physicians–particularly your primary-care physicians–represent your brand?
Take “patient-centeredness.” Lots of hospitals these days are promoting themselves as providing patient-centered care. You know … when the hospital and its staff try where possible to be sensitive to and honor the wishes of patients. But when it comes to patient-centeredness, “walking the talk” is hard in physician offices and even tougher in the hospital.
The fact is that most physicians, with some exceptions, are Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
June 21st, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Opinion
1 Comment »
While by no means a representative sample of how we think about physicians, there is a clear pattern to the comments. A lot of people feel disrespected by their doctors…and they are pretty angry.
Here’s what patients (including a lot of former patients) had to say. I attempted to summarize the comments by category and included the top five categories of comments below.
#1 – “Being on time is a two way street.” – patients are expected to be on time for their appointments – why aren’t physicians expected to be on time. Doctors think and act as if their time is more valuable than the patient’s time.
#2 – “Listen to what I have to say.” “Doctors should realize that many patients have more life experience and have done more research about a condition and drug and may possibly know more than them. God forbid!” “If you do not like listening to your patients and getting proper information from them, you are in the wrong business.”
#3 – “Don’t just hear one or two of my complaints.” You try telling the doctor all the problems you have and the doctor stops you mid-way, telling you that he or she will take care of two and to come back again for other issues!” “What about someone like me who is on disability for a multitude of health problems? What then?”
#4 Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
May 14th, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Health Tips, Opinion
2 Comments »
Lots of smart people over the years have been trying to figure out why people stop taking their medications within the first 12 months. Within the first 12-months of starting a new prescription, patient compliance rates drop to less than 50%. This rate is even lower for people with multiple chronic conditions taking one or more prescription medications.
If these medications are so important to patients, why do they just stop taking them? It defies common sense. Sure issues like medication cost, forgetfulness, lack of symptoms, and psychosocial issues like depression play a role in patient non-compliance. But there also something else going on…or in this case not going on.
The problem is that doctors and patients simply don’t talk much about new medications once prescribed. Here’s what I mean. Let’s say that at a routine check-up a physician tells a patient that he/she wants to put them on a medication to help them control their cholesterol. The doctor spends about 50 seconds telling the patient about the medication. The patient nods their head takes the prescription and boom…the visit is over. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
Looks like Mr. Administrator has some ‘splainin’ to do!
