|
| CLICK HERE |
To Find Current, Open Physician Positions at MINK Member Organizations |
|
_______________
Click on the Ads Below
for Internet Links and
More Information
_______________
| |
|
 MidwestMD
Newsletter November 2009
|
The Patient of the Future
Excerpt of article from Healthleaders Media, by Gienna Shaw & Les Masterson
Physicians suggest. Patients ignore. Technology alone won't bring them together. But a new relationship just might.
In the exam room, a specialist and patient sit together in front of a computer-the physician is showing the patient which sites have the most reliable medical information that she can use to learn more about her recent diagnosis. Next door, a physician is talking to a patient who has unusual symptoms; the doctor consults her PDA, which is loaded with a decision-support application.
Down the hall, an employee e-mails to a prospective patient a detailed, itemized list comparing the costs of hip replacement surgery at a number of area hospitals.
And, by the way, everyone in the waiting room is fit and trim. Nobody smokes anymore. People with diabetes check their blood sugar regularly. Everyone shows up for their colonoscopy appointments. People are knowledgeable about their health, empowered to participate as partners in their care, and engaged enough to comply with their physicians' directives.
Scoff if you want, but in many ways the patient of the future is already here. Obstacles include the current reimbursement model and patients themselves. But physicians also deserve a large chunk of the blame. "I'm impressed how well the medical profession has inadvertently trained patients not to be engaged," says Ted Eytan, MD, medical director for delivery systems operations improvement at The Permanente Federation LLC in Washington, DC, which supports the Medical Groups of Kaiser Permanente. If you go to the doctor and you're sick, they'll ask, "Why did you wait so long?" And if patients aren't sick enough, they say, "You came in too soon." Whenever the patient comes in is the right time, Eytan says. We have to get patients comfortable with saying "I deserve more. I want to be healthy. I want to help manage my care and my health. I want to see every piece of data you have."
Technology connects patients and providers
In the future, patients will communicate with their doctors via e-mail, online chat room, Web portal, mobile device, remote monitoring technology (or some other method or medium that hasn't yet been invented), thus avoiding a long wait for a short appointment that might not have been necessary anyway.
Patients prefer providers who use Internet-based tools to augment care, according to Deloitte's 2009 survey of healthcare consumers. More than half (55%) want to communicate with their doctors via e-mail to exchange health information and get answers to questions, for example. And 68% are interested in remote monitoring devices that allow self-monitoring of their condition and electronic reporting of results to their physician. The figure was even higher for seniors (78%) and consumers with chronic conditions (75%).
Access to EHRs creates engaged patients
Empowered and engaged consumer-patients are armed with customized information about their unique health conditions gleaned from a variety of sources. They have easy, inexpensive, and portable electronic access to their personal health records that they can easily share with whomever they choose.
Physicians and patients become collaborative partners
Patients come to appointments with Internet printouts tucked under their arms or stored on their PDAs. And instead of bristling at that, the clinician of the future will praise the patient of the future for doing his or her homework. Patients and physicians will build relationships and engage on a more personal level than is now the standard.
The best way to improve medicine is to make it more collaborative, he adds. "It may be that this new form of relationship is not nearly as burdensome as people might reasonably anticipate," deBronkart says. "The reality is that there is an enormous flood of new information being published. It's just more than anyone can keep up with."
Patients actually start taking care of themselves
With wellness coaching from their team of caregivers, patients make lifestyle changes-they quit smoking, exercise more, and make healthy food choices. They check their blood pressure and show up for their colonoscopy appointments and monitor their glucose levels.
"Healthcare reform begins at home," Davis says. "Patients have to be empowered and they need to be expected to take some responsibility."
Consumerism goes from fad to trend-to reality
The patient of the future demands to know how much each appointment, test, outpatient procedure, or hospital stay will cost them-down to the very last prescription pill. And they use price and quality data to make decisions about where they go for care.
To read the full article, click here.
|
|
What's In a Name?
Excerpt from the September 2009 issue of Today's Hospitalist, by Edward Doyle
Patients who can identify their physician may also understand more about their own care
How much do your patients understand about the care they receive in the hospital-and your role as a hospitalist?
Earlier this year, the Archives of Internal Medicine published a research letter that found that 75% of patients who had spent some time in a large teaching hospital couldn't name a single inpatient physician who had been in charge of their care. Of the 25% who produced the name of one physician, most were wrong.
Overall, researchers found that only about 4% of patients could correctly identify a physician by name. That was despite the fact that most patients rated their understanding of the roles of their physicians as "very good" or "excellent."
The study raised questions not only about how well patients bond with hospitalists, but about how well patients understand the process of inpatient care and how good of a job physicians are doing communicating with patients. The authors of the study, for example, conjectured that if patients can't name a physician who cared for them in the hospital, they may be less informed about important aspects of their care, including who to direct questions to both in the hospital and post-discharge.
To find out how hospitalists try to help patients understand the role that they play, we asked physicians in four different practices how they introduce themselves and communicate.
Leading with the name of the PCP
"I use the term 'hospital doctor.' "
-Joseph Li, MD Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
When Joseph Li, MD, explains his role as a hospitalist to patients, he goes to great pains to stress that he is working hand in hand with the patient's primary care physician.
"Patients have relationships with PCPs for decades," says Dr. Li, who is director of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center hospitalist program. "Then, at the sickest time of their lives, they end up in the hospital and someone like me shows up. They're left wondering where their PCP is."
To allay any anxiety that patients have-and to help explain the role of hospitalists- Dr. Li makes sure to mention not his name, but the primary care physician's five or six times in the first minute or two that he meets patients. He also avoids using the term "hospitalist" because it takes too much time to explain.
Better name recall
"Patients who can identify their hospitalist have a point person to refer to."
-Manoj K. Mathew, MD HealthCare Partners
To help patients understand his role-and possibly remember his name-Manoj K. Mathew, MD, also likes to emphasize his relationship with their primary care physician. Because he works for a large multispecialty group that employs both hospitalists and primary care physicians, he has a big advantage in that he actually knows many of his patients' PCPs.
With all of his patients, he spells out what will happen throughout their visit so they have a clear understanding of the process, and his role in it. He tells patients, for example, that he'll create a discharge summary and will call the patient's primary physician to discuss the hospital visit. "One frequent question I hear is, 'Will my doctor know what is going on?,' " Dr. Mathew says. "Talking about a discharge summary gives patients the feeling that there's a sense of continuity."
Get family members and nurses involved
"The name is secondary."
-Julia Wright, MD University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
"It helps round out the information for the patient," she explains, "and it helps coordinate follow-up care so everyone knows what their role is. Patients take in a lot of information at the hospital at a time when they're sick and stressed and scared, so even simple things like the physician's name are lost in the mix. But having other people in the room with patients can help reinforce that."
"Other members of the health care team can help share identifying information about the hospitalist in charge with patients and families," Dr. Wright points out. "The nursing staff often take ownership of the patient's care and can really facilitate the exchange of that information."
Managing up
"A role clarification is an important part of introductions."
-David Frenz, MD HealthEast Care System
When it comes to improving patient-doctor communications, HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, Minn., is taking a hard look at how its providers talk about themselves-and their colleagues-to patients.
David Frenz, MD, a hospitalist at HealthEast, says that the health system has been working with a consultant who is advising providers to "manage up" their interactions with patients. Whenever patients are going to see another physician or interact with another department in the hospital, physicians or nurses are supposed to give a little information about that upcoming interaction.
To read the full article, click here
|
to locate practices by location or specialty, and to learn more about MINK MidwestMD | |
|
|
|
|
You're receiving this email because your program coordinator supports the MINK MidwestMD Physician Network and would like for you to be aware of the physician practice opportunities in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
To forward this email to other residents, fellows, and colleagues, please use the "Forward email" feature at the bottom of this newsletter to ensure that all the content is sent correctly. If you simply forward the email from your email account, some of the graphics, links, or data may be lost. Thank you! | |
|
