Engaging The Patient

Within the health industry there are many professionals making it their mission to improve the patient experience. Yet, it is still often times hard to make a health visit as personal as possible.

That’s why two physicians from Twin Rivers Regional Medical Center began incorporating simple, short, “sacred moments” where health professionals and patients bond before diving into the often complicated care process.

As discussed by Medical Director, Steven Pu in HealthLeaders Media Magazine, “We asked why the initial conversation with the patient is so complicated. You have to fill out all this paperwork. ‘Do you have a living will? What is your insurance? And my OB/GYN said, ‘why can’t we have a moment or a time at the beginning with the patient in that first 10 or 15 minutes where we really try to connect with the patient on a more personal basis and try to address their immediate concerns and fears?’

That’s a sacred moment – an uninterrupted opportunity for professional and patient to share with one another.

To learn more about Sacred Moment and how it improves patient experience, our Editorial Director, Geri Lynn Baumblatt, reached out to Steven and had the following Q&A.

Q: What is the Sacred Moment and how did it come about?

A. The physicians at our facility wanted to focus on the spiritual and personal needs of the patients in their care. Their desire was for the nurse and patient to have an uninterrupted moment once the patient arrives to the floor. This establishes a bond between the patient and nurse and trust in the staff that will be caring for that patient.

Q: Why is it sacred and does it really just take a moment? It seems like asking these questions would often lead to a much bigger conversation.

A. Sacred – because it should be that powerful in the eyes of the patient as well as the caregiver. So meaningful at the time that it leaves an impression that is deemed “sacred” to the patient. It only takes a “moment” in the overall scheme of things. It could actually be 2 minutes or may extend to 15 – 20 minutes, every patient is individual and every patient’s needs are different. But in the patient’s overall perception of a hospital stay, that sacred time is just a “moment” in the patient’s overall stay. Continue Reading »

The triple aim is the catch-all phrase for what healthcare needs to be focused on.

Total engagement supports providers for the near term and the long term.

Healthcare organizations have three business objectives:

1. To focus on outcomes as healthcare switches from fee-for-service to fee-for-value
2.  To provide a service with high patient satisfaction
3. To cost-effectively distribute healthcare economics

Total engagement understands the challenges of health systems and has a track record of delivering solutions that effectively address them.

It creates new solutions and innovations that address the needs of an ever-changing market, and can visibly show its impact within an actual client setting.

The Emmi® Total Engagement Platform supports the near-term and long-term objectives of health organizations and supports IHI’s Triple Aim by supporting provider efforts to:

• Improve patient experience of care
• Improve the health of populations
• Reduce the per capita cost of health care Continue Reading »

A true test for any patient engagement solution: Do they talk about it or do they actually do it for a living?

How are they presenting their product abilities?

Do they claim to be the leader of patient engagement but have little to no experience in the industry?

It’s finding out who says it versus who does it.

You’ve seen the commercial of the plumber who did your taxes?  That’s like patient engagement.

Even TV platforms that used to claim to be leaders in “patient entertainment” are suddenly leaders in patient engagement.

Providing total engagement is more than changing a tagline or chasing the next buzzword.

Total engagement has the appropriate experience and staff to support the success of both providers and patients. Continue Reading »

Every “patient engagement solution” is claiming that they drive real outcomes.

Well, what is real that we can all agree upon is that healthcare is expensive, margins are shrinking, and providers have to be very careful with what they spend.

So, if as an engagement partner you’re going to make value claims and want a provider to spend money on your product, you better be able to substantiate your value.

Total engagement can say, “here’s how we’re going to save you money, here’s how we measure it, and here’s how were going to stand behind it.”

It’s proof over promises.

Healthcare organizations are accountable for outcomes and their partners should be as well. Clients should expect hard dollar ROI studies that are impartially funded and conducted.

Our Emmi® Total Engagement Platform measures and provides clinical and financial outcomes and,

• Is supported by multiple clinical and financial outcome studies
•  Has supporting data shown to improve:
  •  HCAHPS
  • Efficiencies (e.g. consult length, call volume, LOS)
  • Clinical outcomes

Total engagement supports providers where and when they need it most. Where else can’t typical patient engagement solutions keep up? See Part 7 on Tuesday.

We hear it time and time again: Knowledge is power.

And there is a lot of data proving that a better educated patient is less costly to treat and leads to better outcomes. So, a major unifying goal that now pervades the healthcare industry is accountability.

Do you want to know for a fact your engagement partner can activate patients or do you want to take it at face value?

A provider should be able to say to its engagement partner, “Show me the impact of these interventions on men, on women, on this age group, in this state, in this zip code…”

People are used to running analytics on their population a million different ways, you’re engagement partner needs to afford you that flexibility.

Total engagement contains tools that allow providers to measure their impact from multiple perspectives.

After all, the ability to confirm that patients receive and review information prescribed by their clinician is a fundamental measure needed to quantify impact.

The Emmi® Total Engagement Platform delivers results down to the individual patient by: Continue Reading »

Patient engagement solutions have to be non-disruptive.

Health care organizations want to work with fewer vendors, not more vendors; with few problems, not more complexity.

Providers and engagement partners should work together and complement one another.

Take the Microsoft® Office Suite for example – the reason it works so well and is that it allows users to copy and paste something from Microsoft Word and put it into Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel… everything works together.

In healthcare settings, the EMR is the central repository of all patient information. If an engagement solution can’t work seamlessly with the EMR, providers won’t want to work with it.

That would be like saying, “We have this great software product… but you can’t save anything on a PC platform.”

Or imagine having software where you can email someone a document, but they can’t open it in Microsoft.

Even the PDF format was created so users can open files without complication – PDF is platform agnostic.

Total engagement compliments the operating systems being used to run healthcare.

It’s hard enough to change behavior to incorporate patient engagement into the care process, let alone require providers to learn to use an entirely new and complex system.

Total engagement is complementary and additive, not disruptive or distracting. Continue Reading »

Historically, healthcare technology communication has been designed at the convenience of the provider, not the patient, but people want to be engaged when and where it’s convenient for them.

Take banking for example – Consumers don’t want to only access their finances at the bank between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., they want to be able to go to an ATM, check their balance online, or on their smartphones, etc.

Patients need and want to be engaged when and where it’s convenient for them and total engagement provides that convenience.

You don’ want a partner that only allows your patients to get information online.

Or one that only allows patients to access information on their phones if they have an Android with the newest version of flash and the newest version of Google and a high speed data plan.

Total engagement isn’t restricted.

In the simplest sense, if you have a screen, you should be able to see it.

Patients must have the ability to receive information when they want, where they want, and on the devices they already own. Continue Reading »