Patient empowerment: Next step in accountable care

by Kent Bottles Recent articles highlight challenges with holding providers accountable for the care they deliver. One of the major thrusts of efforts to transform the American healthcare delivery system has been to become more patient-centered and to allow patients to provide feedback that matters. Emblematic of this is the emphasis on patient involvement in the final rules for the Shared Savings Program accountable care organizations (ACO). Echoing former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Director Don Berwick's plea on the behalf of patients ("Nothing about us without us"), the ACO final rules emphasize patient engagement in governance, quality improvement and the individual doctor/patient interaction. Michael Millenson's white paper provides a summary of the patient empowerment movement. The development of the patient activation measure (PAM) and the Center for Advancing Health's 43 engagement behaviors has allowed us to study patient-centeredness with more specificity. Studies have shown that activated patients are less likely to choose surgical interventions, have better functional status and satisfaction, are more likely to perform self-management behaviors, and report higher medication adherence rates. Healthcare policy experts and payers have embraced the argument outlined above, and patients' reports of their satisfaction with both physicians and hospitals have increasingly been used to calculate financial rewards. For instance, a recent Ha...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs