At the center of every healthcare interaction — visiting an ambulatory clinic, having a procedure done at a surgical center, being admitted for an acute hospital stay, rehabbing with your home health care team, etc. — is the patient.
Today’s patients are active participants in their care and knowledgeable consumers, requiring easy access to their health data. With the use of tools to communicate, and the access to add to their health story, patients can work with their care team to provide a clearer picture and in turn help make more informed decisions.
Healthcare is in a transition with changing the mindset from patient to consumer. We need to adapt our operations to support patients and their caregivers, and create a team centered consumer driven experience.
Here are three blogs that highlight how MEDITECH customers have implemented strategies to improve patient engagement.
Make “Delighting the Patient” a differentiator for your organization
It’s not enough to improve the patient experience, explains Rich Temple, CIO of Deborah Heart and Lung Center, “You have to delight them.”
Temple suggests ways that organizations can use their patient portal, texting capabilities, and call center processes to distinguish themselves in the competitive healthcare marketplace.
When health systems strive to delight patients, it benefits everyone involved in their care — the patients, their care providers, and the organization.
Improving health equity one medication at a time
In this blog, Priscilla A. Frase, MD, Hospitalist/CMIO at Ozarks Healthcare describes how her organization worked to improve patient access to medications upon discharge.
Building on Ozarks’s existing Meds to Beds program, pharmacy technicians, nurses, physicians, therapists, and case managers work together during the patient’s stay to address their needs and enter discharge information, including prescriptions, as soon as it becomes available.
Ozarks also leverages resources like 340B eligibility to provide affordable medications to patients, “which can make a huge difference in people’s health and in their lives,” writes Frase.
How community hospitals can put their data to work
Jackie Rice, Vice President for Information Technology and CIO of Frederick Health, writes that the “common denominator” in how her organization determines which projects to pursue is data.
To make the most effective decisions, Rice explains, the data must be accurate — and to ensure that accuracy, Frederick Health created a data governance model that centralizes and streamlines decision-making on the organizational level, breaking down silos and empowering staff.
By expanding the data governance program across care settings, Frederick Health has been able to give providers a more complete view of patient care.
Keep up with healthcare IT’s most influential thought leaders by signing up for the MEDITECH Blog.
