The safest patients are highly engaged

The Feb. 14, 2013 brief on patient engagement in Health Affairs offered some startling statistics on the low value of care for disengaged patients.

According to the article authored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, patients with the lowest engagement scores incurred 21 percent higher costs than patients who were highly engaged. Furthermore, the predicted per capita costs of patients with low engagement were 14 percent higher than slightly engaged patients. Even a little patient engagement can result in huge savings to the health system.

Why are patients not engaged in their care? What are the barriers preventing patients from sharing in decisions about their own care? Health Affairs reports that overworked physicians, insufficient training and clinical information systems that failed to track patients were the culprits.

There is little evidence of “best practices” to achieve high levels of patient engagement. The Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council Foundation’s Patient Safety and Quality Committee have been hard at work looking for potential solutions. One idea is the North Texas adoption of shared patient engagement materials. These would have checklists for patients and caregivers to obtain information about their care while in the hospital.

In 2011, Johns Hopkins prepared the patient engagement handbook “My Health Notebook.” Patients are provided these materials at admission and encouraged to use the checklists to ask questions during their stay. Patients are also provided guidelines on follow-up appointments. You can find more information here. (http://armstronginstitute.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/2011/12/20/a-safety-checklist-for-patients/) Karen Curtiss also published a similar tool entitled “Safe and Sound in the Hospital.” The anti-microbial book of checklists offers step-by-step guides to patients. These materials can be found here. (http://www.campaignzero.org/safety-checklists).

But we know there are other ideas out there. We would like to hear how you effectively engage patients. Please send your ideas to kjenkins@dfwhcfoundation.org. We will share them anonymously with the Patient and Safety Committee for future consideration.