Becker's Hospital Review

August 2017 Issue of Becker's Hospital Review

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42 32 Hospital Executives Talk Patient Engagement By Molly Gamble and Emily Rappleye I n April, 32 executives, vice presidents, directors and other senior-level healthcare professionals gathered in Chicago to share insights and ex- plore solutions to the industry's most pressing challenges, including patient engagement, quality improvement, system integration, clinician well- being and the relationship between these critical priorities. is live discussion was captured in a graphic recording, pictured above. Leaders' dynamic discussion has been captured in a three-part series: Part I (Patient engagement), Part II (Care quality improvement in times of value-based care) and Part III (Functioning as a system). We are pleased to share Part I in this issue; to see how the conversation unfolds, follow the series in subsequent issues of Becker's Hospital Review. is meeting and article were paid for through a sponsorship by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma- ceuticals. Patient engagement When 13 healthcare leaders were asked to define "patient engagement," it didn't take long for com- mon themes to emerge in their answers. Each of these healthcare leaders possessed a clear vision of what patient or consumer engagement looks like in his or her organization. e idea of part- nership was by far the most pervasive notion to emerge. "Engagement means we are partners for life — listening, educating and coming to an agreement on a plan," said the COO and CNO of a 191-bed suburban hospital in the Midwest. Although leaders shared a common vision of en- gagement, they noted caveats or nuances when defining it. For one, there is still room for debate around using the terms "customer" or "consumer" interchangeably with "patient." Such traditional business lexicon does not easily roll off the tongue for all hospital executives or clinicians. Although a growing number of healthcare professionals do use the term "consumer" or acknowledge con- sumerism influencing their work, the term is not yet universally accepted. Another caveat to keep in mind, according to leaders: Patient engagement looks or feels differ- ent depending on the condition, acuity of illness, age or patient disposition. Consider how the needs range between a patient with type 2 diabetes, one with stage 3 colon can- cer or another with a rare disease. As for age, the president of a major children's hospital in the Southeast said his teams are tasked daily to build engagement with both patients and entire fami- lies. "Children have very unique needs," he said. "eir emotional contents are different, and most parents feel when something happens to their kids it's much worse than anything that could happen to them." But perhaps the largest caveat noted was the di- lemma hospitals face to engage patients in a sus- tainable way in light of restricted resources, be it talent, finances or time. "Ideally we want to follow-up with 100 percent of patients," said the vice president of outpatient pharmacy for a 48-hospital system in the Southwest. "e reality is we have limited resources. We can only touch the ... 20 percent [with the greatest needs], most of whom ac- count for 80 to 85 percent of our spend. It's a challenge every system is facing: How do you utilize the limited resources to do the best you can?" With these qualifications in mind, the conversa- tion turned to effective strategies health systems are deploying to build and sustain partnerships with patients. Here are key takeaways from the discussion. The power of radical candor from pa- tients When asked to define patient engagement, one executive put it succinctly: "We need to start lis- tening to them." In the dialogue that followed, she and her colleagues illustrated a variety of ways in which care teams are doing just that. e first method is tried and true: patient adviso- ry boards. In the past five years, a growing num- ber of hospitals and health systems have recruited

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