Build Patient Collaboration and Grow Your Practice with Patient Reported Outcomes | OBERD
09/02/18
This article is the third in a series of Executive Guest Posts by Steve Wood, PhD, OBERD Senior Vice President - Strategic Partnerships
Consumer Engagement Requires Collaboration: I read an interesting article by McKinsey recently1 that lead with the headline, “McKinsey’s latest healthcare consumer research suggests that consumer engagement can improve care access, quality, and affordability. But to be successful, it requires true collaboration.
The article continued with the thoughts that many consumers would like to be better healthcare consumers—in particular, they want to be better able to make decisions to address their needs. In a survey McKinsey conducted, respondents repeatedly indicated that they want to be good healthcare consumers who can make informed choices about the care they receive. McKinsey’s conclusion was that, “To help consumers reach this goal, the healthcare industry will need to engage with them in more and better ways. Collaboration will be crucial.”
PROS Enable Collaboration: Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO) data offers the perfect opportunity for physicians to collaborate with their patients. First, collecting this data can indicate to your patients that you care about their situation and functionality and plan to bring a data-informed approach to their care and treatment. Pre-treatment discussions with data at hand can encourage a sense of collaboration and affords the opportunity to clearly set outcomes expectations based upon a common understanding of the patient’s status.
Collaboration Creates Higher Physician Ratings: Post-treatment the PRO data can be used collaboratively to explain the improvement in functionality and encourage compliance with follow up patient behaviors to sustain and improve functionality obtained from the procedure. Further, this understanding will likely sponsor a further appreciation of the procedure’s accomplishment which will, in turn, provide evidence of success that patients can share with others. This positive word of mouth marketing, directly and through higher ratings on web sites such as Healthgrades, Google and Vitals, of physician’s practices is among the most effective ways that new patients are obtained.
Conclusion: Thus, PROs can enable patient collaboration which will in turn enable consumers/patients to make informed choices about the care they receive and grow the collaborating physician’s practice as well.
- Healthcare consumerism 2018: An update on the journey by Jenny Cordina, Elizabeth P. Jones, Rohit Kumar, and Carlos Pardo Martin
