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The gap between the demands placed on us by U.S. health care delivery and the ability of individuals – even the most informed and engaged among us – to meet those demands undermines the quality of our care, escalates its cost and diminishes its positive impact on our health.
What does it take for us and our families to find good care and make the most of it? And what can be done to help those who lack the skills, resources or capacities, or who are already ill, compensate for their inability to do so?
This collection of essays identifies some of the key challenges posed to most of us by health care as it is currently delivered in many settings. None of these challenges is monumental, but each one contributes to the steady erosion in quality of care and to a waste of resources. Each essay identifies a “slow leak” that saps value from the services and technologies we receive and suggests solutions that would benefit us and those who work with us to improve our health.
Slow Leaks: Missed Opportunities to Encourage Our Engagement in Our Health Care
How Easily We Can Misinterpret the Benefits of Patient-Centered Innovation!
May 8, 2013
Here's the bad news: We will not benefit from the health care services, drugs, tests and procedures available to us unless we pay attention, learn about our choices, interact with our clinicians and follow through on the plans we make together.
The "True Grit"-tiness of Sharing Health Care Decisions with Our Doctors
May 1, 2013
In the Coen brothers remake of the 1969 movie True Grit, Mattie Ross, an intrepid 14-year-old, is determined to hunt down and kill the man who murdered her father. To accomplish this, she hires U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, (played by a mumbling Jeff Bridges) a rough, one-eyed veteran of many such quests then announces that she plans to come along. She figures she is prepared.
Bad Language: Words One Patient Won't Use (and Hopes You Won't Either)
April 24, 2013
When I read Trudy Lieberman’s post yesterday, I was reminded that the highly charged political debates about reforming American health care have provided tempting opportunities to rename the people who receive health services. But because the impetus for this change has been prompted by cost and quality concerns of health care payers, researchers and policy experts rather than emanating from us out of our own needs, some odd words have been called into service.
Whose Patient Engagement Goals Are We Talking About?
April 17, 2013
What we look for when we participate actively in our health care differs from what our clinicians, employers and health plans believe will result when we shift from being passive to active participants. We don't have the same goals in mind. Does this matter?
Has Patient Engagement Stalled?
April 10, 2013
A few discouraging reports on patient engagement have skittered across my desk in the past few weeks. What's going on? Why are so many of us so slow to engage in our care when it is increasingly clear that we will do better if we participate more fully? Here's what I suspect...
