Healthcare managers must understand patient engagement’s objectives, touchpoints, and advantages before developing a patient’s treatment plan.
Why Should Patients Engage?
Patient engagement, until recently, was primarily concerned with the relations between patients and their healthcare professionals when it came to making decisions about their care and enhancing their attempts to manage their health. Administrators in the healthcare industry are seeking new ways like Momentum Life Sciences to incorporate patients more broadly and reflect their experiences.
This change results in a greater appreciation of a user’s legitimate role, knowledge, and valuable contribution to the planning and provision of care. No matter how involved the patient is, the aim of greater involvement is always to raise the standard of treatment.
Engagement-influencing Factors
Three kinds of factors: the patient, the healthcare system, and society all impact patient participation. The level of a patient’s engagement might change depending on their perceptions of their role, level of education, and health literacy.
Patient participation may change due to an organization’s policies, procedures, and workplace culture. Finally, cultural norms, rules, and public policy either promote or inhibit patient engagement.
The Spectrum of Patient Engagement: Levels
Direct care, organizational design and governance, and policymaking are the three degrees of participation that span a continuum of involvement encompassing partnership, shared leadership, and consultation. Patients start their care journey at the direct care level of participation by learning more about their condition or sickness. In the involvement stage, caregivers begin by asking patients about their choices for their care. The third level is partnership and leadership, where patients and caregivers jointly decide on a course of treatment based on scientific data, professional judgment, and patient choices.
When an organization asks patients to rate their medical experience and serve as advisors, this is known as the patient involvement level of organizational design and governance. The final stage of this level involves including patients as leaders in hospital safety and quality improvement initiatives.
At the third level of patient engagement, policymaking, a public organization solicits patient feedback on a health issue, considers patient suggestions for funding priorities, and includes patients equally on agency committees that make funding decisions.
Techniques to Increase Patient Engagement
Information simplification is one tactic to boost patient engagement. Healthcare personnel must be able to explain concepts at a sixth-grade reading levelto ensure patients comprehend critical information. Healthcare workers can increase patient involvement by being transparent and ensuring their data is readily accessible and available in numerous media, such as written, audio, and video forms.
Avoiding assumptions about patients’ health beliefs and ensuring that patients have a medically accurate understanding of healthcare ideas are two more strategies that healthcare practitioners should use when speaking with patients.
Finally, healthcare workers should motivate patients to make goals. Patients who believe they are working toward a worthwhile objective are more likely to stick to a treatment plan.
Conclusion
Healthcare administrators may improve overall outcomes and streamline patient services using cutting-edge technology platforms and the backing of leaders and managers.