HealthManagement, Volume 18 - Issue 6, 2018
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Challenges and opportunities for keeping engaged.
With patient engagement there comes increasing responsibility – on the patient, their family and the provider. HealthManagement.org spoke to four leading patient advocates for their views on approaching patient engagement and the challenges that lie ahead.
Dave deBronkart
Patient Advocate, Speaker and Author
e-Patient Dave
USA
[email protected], epatientdave.com
@ePatientDave
"Becoming engaged in your health is exactly the same as caring for yourself in other ways. When we’re young and vulnerable, good people care for us. As we grow, we learn to think and act for ourselves, which in healthcare as everywhere else, brings new risks, responsibilities, and independence."
Marie-Ennis-O'Connor
Healthcare Communications Strategist, Writer and Keynote Speaker
Health Care Social Media
[email protected], hcsmmonitor.com
@JBBC
"Patient engagement has become a buzzword in the healthcare industry, used to describe everything from engaging patients with hospital portals to tracking vitals with wearables. I’ve seen it co-opted by industry stakeholders, described (often interchangeably) as patient activation, involvement, participation, compliance, and centricity. But what I have yet to see is any significant progress in turning the rhetoric of patient engagement into a discernible reality in the real-world in which patients live. Patient engagement has enormous potential to transform how the industry delivers care to patients, but until patients themselves define what meaningful engagement looks like, I fear it will remain nothing more than an empty phrase."
Peter Kapitein
Patient Advocate
Inspire2Live Amsterdam, The Netherlands
[email protected], inspire2live.org
@milojaron
"Healthcare is about patients and therefore they need to know and decide. Together with their physician they ‘built' the best treatment for their own health at this moment. This ‘Precision medicine’ creates value in healthcare and therefore it will be efficient as well. For patients this is an uphill battle, for many stakeholders do not see the added value of patients in the improvement of healthcare. Nevertheless, they are."
Katherine A. Schneider
President and Chief Executive Officer
Delaware Valley ACO
Radnor, Philadelphia
[email protected], dvaco.org
@DV_ACO
"The biggest opportunity (and challenge) is the removal of barriers and complexity that make it very difficult for patients to do the right thing even when they are motivated to do so. Wherever possible, and especially for those with chronic/complex/costly conditions, healthcare should offer a one-stop shopping experience where the patient does not need to have a PhD in project management in order to adhere to a care plan."
