Why your practice needs a health coach (and how to get one)

Engaging patients in behavior changes can improve their overall health and reduce the amount of medical care they need, but it’s often difficult for physicians to find the extra time to collaborate and plan these types of strategies. Trained health coaches can take on a lot of these responsibilities to advance lifestyle changes, prevention and patient health. Having a health coach involved in a patient’s care can not only increase patient satisfaction and engagement but also reduce physician stress and burnout by freeing up time. In a new module from the AMA’s STEPS Forward™ collection of practice improvement strategies, primary care physician Thomas Bodenheimer, MD, provides insights into implementing health coaching in your practice. Dr. Bodenheimer is a professor of family community medicine at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and contributed this module after winning the AMA-MGMA Practice Innovation Challenge. You don’t need to look far to find a health coach A health coach can bring an extra boost to your practice’s methods for both prevention and treatment. Health coaches may be registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, medical assistants (MA), health educators or community health workers. You may consider transitioning a current staff member into the health coach role. Or you may consider recruiting pre-medical or pre-nursing student interns to serve as volunteer health coaches if there are not enough resources to ...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news