"Patients are, in fact, overly patient; they put up with unnecessary discomforts and grant their doctors the benefit of every doubt, until deficiencies in care are too manifest to be overlooked. Generally speaking, one can assume that the quality of care is,...
Patient Engagement
HIT-Driven Patient Engagement Is A Bust – Effective Patient Engagement Begins With The Doctor-Patient Relationship
I hate saying I told you so. But to quote myself…"patient engagement is a physician-patient communications challenge and not an HIT (Health Information Technology) challenge." Just take a look at the Mayo Clinic’s patient portal experience which was discussed at a...
The 10 Commandments of Patient Engagement For Clinicians – No Health IT Required
As a patient, care giver, researcher and a human being, here 's my "take" on what physicians and hospitals, and all the entities that work with them like health plans, ACOs , etc. need to do to effectively increase patient engagement in 2013 and beyond. Act like you...
What Are Your Personal Health Goals? Have You Ever Shared Them With Your Doctor? Has Your Doctor Ever Asked You What Yours Are?
Face it. We all have personal health goals. We may not share our personal health goals with family of friends like we do our financial or professional goals, but we all still have them. I for example aspire to the following personal health goals: To defy the...
Patient Engagement Is A Physician-Patient Communication Challenge…Not A Health Information Technology Challenge
There is no app for engaging patients in their own health care absent a strong doctor-patient relationship. Physicians, hospitals and other providers are being misled by industry pundits claiming that more health information technology (as in EMRs, PHRs, Smart Phone...
Patient Engagement – Here’s Why It’s So Hard For Health Care Providers
Three Reasons Why Doctors Need To Spend More Time Talking and Listening To Their Patients
Since most physicians probably will not be able to get beyond the first couple of lines of this post without yelling at the monitor...I will get to the 3 reasons…and if you stick with me …I’ll present my case for why they are so important. Your visits will be more...
Patient-Centered Communications – Does “Lack of Time” Justify Physician Reluctance To Adopt It?
I talk with lot of physicians about the need to improve the quality of communications between physicians and patients. Regular followers of my work will know that I am an advocate for the adoption of patient-centered communication skills by the physician and...
Engaging Patients In Care Planning – What Providers Say And How They Say It Matters
The following is s post by Carolyn Thomas, a fellow 2012 Stanford Medicine X e-patient scholar, which she wrote for her award-winning blog Heart Sisters. Imagine that your daughter is preparing for a junior ski race. It’s five minutes before the start of the race....