Patient Self Management

Presenting #hcsmca’s 2-year report card. Alaina Cyr created yet another beautiful infographic. 

How the health care social media communities like #hcsmCA #hcsm (US) #hcsmEU etc. makes a global platform of interchange and communication between all stakeholders in health care: patients, physicians, industry, governmental institutions, university and other do find there a platform of trust, laying the basics for learning, sharing and evolving on Twitter as a main entrance gate to all.

Ref. http://www.symplur.com/healthcare-hashtags/

Yet, discussion is one, how to step up to collaboration. I see more offsprings to partnership in health to come!

Thanks to Collen Young, Canada to refer me to this!

Find her at http://bit.ly/Wkj1sg

;-)

With policy documents promoting patient-centred healthcare, Steven Laitner explores how the shared decision making programme is providing tools to help make them reality...

Shared decision making is the belief that patients and their clinicians bring equally valuable input to the table when patients reach a decisions crossroads in their healthcare.

Clinicians know about the options available, while patients know what they want from their treatment. With current clinical information, relevant to their particular condition, patients can be helped to work through any questions they may have, explore the options available, and take a treatment route which best suits their needs and expectations.

Shared decision making can reduce treatment disagreements, lead to more realistic expectations, reduce clinically unwarranted treatments, and potentially reduce litigation. Importantly, patients are more likely to stick with a course of action or treatment when they have chosen it, rather than had it foisted upon them. It leads to a better patient experience.

Review study signifies a positive effect of interactive computer based interventions for weight loss or weight maintenance in overweight or obese people, though not necessarily more effective than face to face interactions..

To effectively engage patients and caregivers, it is critical that health care providers engage with empathy.

Do you feel connected with your doctor or other health care providers? Do you partner with your providers? How important is patient engagement to you? What words do you use to define patient engagement? Do you consider yourself an empowered patient or health care consumer?

What is patient engagement?

Here is how I define patient engagement.

This is an interview with Yaffa Rubinstein about her experiences working within rare disease patient registries and the challenges in patient recruitment.

“Unless patients are organized in advocacy groups and have their specific disease registry, there is a difficulty to identify and locate the patients.”

First stepsProjects under way in the NHS are exploring possibilities.

Giving patients control of their medical records may sound scary to many doctors, but it could reduce workload and improve outcomes, Peter Davies reports

Every general practice in England will have to offer patients online access to their care records by 2015, according to the government’s information strategy for the NHS published in May.1 Currently only 1% do so. As the Department of Health acknowledges, this represents “a challenge to the culture and practices of some health and care organisations and professionals.”

But advocates of patient access to records now want to go further....

See also KAthi Apostolidis' respons to this on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/295223483902051/permalink/328499343907798/

This morning Larry Chu, MD, and his team at the Stanford AIM Lab released its first eBook, which shares the stories of the 35 ePatient scholars attending the Stanford Medicine X conference this Sept. 28-30.

“Engage with Empathy” published on The Huffington Post on 6/27/12 in the Healthy Living/Health News Section.

Do you feel connected with your doctor or other health care providers? Do you partner with your providers? How important is patient engagement to you? What words do you use to define patient engagement? Do you consider yourself an empowered patient or health care consumer?

What is patient engagement?

Here is how I define patient engagement.

Read insghts from Accenture's Connected Health Pulse Survey which shows eHealth as an attractive option for patients seeking self-service healthcare.

Most (90 percent) patients surveyed want to embrace eHealth self-service options, such as access to health information, scheduling and prescription refills, but nearly half of patients (46 percent) are not even aware if their health records are available electronically, according to an Accenture survey of 1,100 US patients. Additionally, eighty-five percent want the option of communicating with their doctor in person.

Patients want more access to their medical records online, but want to maintain their personal contact with doctors, according to new Accenture research.

The Accenture Connected Health Pulse Survey determined the level of access and preferred channels of access to electronic healthcare-related information and services; gauged patient perceptions of EHRs, including benefits and barriers to adoption; and explored differences in patient perspectives versus physicians as well as between federal health personnel and the general population. The online survey was fielded March 30 through April 4, 2012.

See pdf of study and source for requests for more information in this blog.

Take-home focal points from a Guardian panel discussion on patient feedback on factors that shape the patient experience:

* Staff approach and attitude

* Accessible, responsive feedback

* An appreciation of the importance of social media

* Shared decision making

* Collaboration

* Effective use of technology

* Better benchmarking

* A 'whole system' approach

* Introducing the patient voice into board meetings

* Making patients feel valued

* Transparency

'Findings related to Web-use skills differences suggest two classes of interventions to facilitate access to good-quality online health information.

Challenges related to attitudes and technical skills should be remedied by improving people’s basic Web-use skills. In particular, Web users should be taught how to avoid information overload by generating specific search terms and to avoid low-quality information by requesting results from trusted websites only.

Problems related to discovery may be remedied by visually labeling search engine results according to quality criteria.'

J Med Internet Res 2012;14(3):e87
doi:10.2196/jmir.2051

Apps can now deliver information like blood glucose levels, the location of a stent or the name of the nearest specialty hospital.