Patient Engagement in Value-Based Care

Patients who are more actively involved in their healthcare, experience better health outcomes and incur lower cost. Organizations are finding ways to better engage patients by educating them about their condition and involving them fully in making decisions about their care.

These are latest patient engagement keywords pertaining the rise of value based care initiatives.[1]

Chronic Disease Management

Healthcare professionals provide treatment and self-management plans to patients with life-long chronic conditions. These care plans include a strict medication regime, wellness activities, and health behavior change plans to prevent chronic conditions from developing into a more serious conditions. Clinicians must also use patient engagement strategies to motivate patients to comply with their part of the care plan.

Patient Experience

It involves a range of interactions that patients have with the health care system, including their care from health plans and from doctors, nurses and staff in hospitals, physician practices and other care facilities. Healthcare professionals measure the patient experience by understanding the elements that are valuable to patients. Timely access to treatment, simple access to patient health data and clear communication between the patient and provider are among the most important elements.

Patient-Reported Outcomes

Patient Reported Outcome measures (PROMs) are quality measures that allows providers to gather reviews of how a patient is doing after a procedure. Rather than focusing on the technical clinical quality, PROMs look at the quality of life following a procedure or surgery.

Risk Stratification

It is the practice of separating various patient populations by their cost related risk. Health care organization use risk stratification to determine their care efforts, including patient engagement efforts.

Social Determinants of Health

Socioeconomic status, education, the physical environment, employment, social support networks as well as access to healthcare are social determinants of health. Healthcare professionals leverage social determinant data to help care for patient social needs.

Patient engagement in one strategy to achieve the “triple aim” of improved health outcomes, better patient care and lower costs. These key concepts will assist clinicians in targeting their patient engagement efforts to the appropriate patients or help them determine the value of care provided.

[1] PatientEngagementHIT.com – 5 Patient Engagement Terms shaping Value Based Care by Sarah Heath