Drive Better Outcomes with Four Data-Informed Patient Engagement Tactics

Drive Better Outcomes with Four Data-
Informed Patient Engagement Tactics

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Patient Engagement Tactics
Health experts suggest that patient
engagement can lead to better health
outcomes and increased participation in
the healthcare decision-making process.
Patient engagement means that patients
become active members of the care team,
regularly communicating with the care
team throughout the entire care process
to better manage their own health.

When care teams inform patients about
treatment options and involve them in care
decisions, patients become more invested
in their health and more accountable to the
care team and themselves.

Because each patient has a different level
of health literacy and willingness to
participate in the care process, engaging
patients can be difficult.
However, care teams can improve patient
engagement by using actionable data to
overcome these barriers.
Data empowers providers to implement
systemwide shared decision-making
processes, identify and reduce health
disparities, prioritize the patient’s voice,
and provide relevant patient education
early in the care process.

Improve Patient Engagement:
Four Data-Informed Tactics
The best approach to healthcare includes extensive patient-provider
collaboration from start to finish. Four data-driven tactics can foster this two-
way communication and help health systems deliver patient-centered care
and improve patient engagement:
Tactic 1: Implement
Shared Decision-
Making Interventions
Tactic 2: Advance
Health Equity
Tactic 3: Prioritize
Patient Feedback
Tactic 4: Provide
Patient-Centered
Education

Tactic 1: Implement Shared Decision-Making Interventions
A key part of patient engagement
includes providers and patients making
decisions together.
To make the most informed decisions,
clinicians should consider the patient
an active member of the care team.

With this collaborative approach, the
care team and patient share their
perspectives and feedback about the
patient’s goals and care plan before
making any decisions.
Health systems can promote patient
engagement through shared decision
making systemwide by implementing
processes and analytic indicators to
measure how often providers utilize the
decision support tools.

Access to data about decision support utilization
allowed Allina Health to identify variations in its
shared decision-making process.
Although Allina had shared decision-making,
analytic insight revealed that clinicians and
providers weren’t using the strategies and
missing key opportunities to improve patient
engagement.

To take advantage of these patient
engagement opportunities and
increase shared decision-making
conversations, Allina’s leaders
modified decision-making
processes and updated workflows.
They then implemented the
changes in a pilot program with
the help of an oversight committee
of diverse clinical leaders.

Allina monitored the success of the pilot
with data to identify areas that were
working well and those they could improve.
The standardized and optimized shared
decision-making process resulted in better
patient engagement with 749 patients
participating in a shared decision-making
conversation across the system.

Tactic 2: Advance Health Equity
Healthcare disparities prevent vulnerable
populations (e.g., low-income groups) from
equal access to quality care.
With a duty to ensure equal access to care
for all individuals, regardless of race,
socioeconomic status, or gender, health
systems must identify access barriers for
certain groups of people and the impact
these barriers have on patient engagement.

Healthcare disparities prevent vulnerable
populations (e.g., low-income groups)
from equal access to quality care.
With a duty to ensure equal access to
care for all individuals, regardless of
race, socioeconomic status, or gender,
health systems must identify access
barriers for certain groups of people
and the impact these barriers have
on patient engagement.

Patients cannot actively engage in the
care process if they cannot access basic
care needs.
Fortunately, organizations can leverage
data to identify health inequities, their
root causes, and the appropriate
interventions to eliminate gaps in care.

For example, to start the conversation
about health equity, a health system can
gather outcomes data by ethnicity (e.g.,
Latino, white, or African American).
With this information, organizations can
identify the outcome differentials, then
dig deeper to understand the cause of
the disparities.

One healthcare organization leveraged an
analytics application to collect data about
healthcare disparities within the system,
revealing opportunities to increase patient
engagement and, therefore, outcomes.

For example, colorectal cancer (CRC)
screening data highlighted disparities among
non-white, non-English speaking groups.
Leaders at the organization used race,
ethnicity, and language data, combined
with data from the EHR, to understand
different causes of the disparities
including patients’ religious beliefs and
understanding of health practices.

The disparity findings allowed the organ-
ization to better engage the patient groups
with low CRC screening levels by creating
interventions specific to the group’s patient
engagement barriers (e.g., language).
The modalities included at-home testing
kits and phone call appointment reminders
in native languages.

With a customized approach to care
delivery, patients had the tools they
needed to participate in the care
process and engage in care decisions.
Coupled with the analytic insight
about the interventions’ effectiveness,
the organization saw a 3 percent
improvement in CRC screening rates
for targeted populations.

Tactic 3: Prioritize Patient Feedback
With an abundance of data in healthcare,
it can be easy for providers to focus on
metrics over a patient’s voice.
However, the metrics don’t always provide
the patient’s feedback about care, a
critical piece of patient engagement.

Patient feedback is valuable because it
allows the patient to be part of the care
team and have a voice in care decisions.
Although patient commentary is a vital
part of keeping patients engaged in their
care, many organizations don’t have a
way of collecting this information,
meaning providers relay feedback
anecdotally or don’t at all.

To increase patient engagement,
organizations can ensure patients’ voices
are heard with programs like Patient
Reported Outcomes Measures (PROMs).
One health system used PROMs to
collect information directly from
patients about their care, health
education, resources, facilities,
and more.

This comprehensive information revealed
that patient reported information included
valuable insight regarding a patient’s quality
of life that the initial outcomes data lacked.
The health system collects approximately
12,000 PROMs per month across 20
specialties that has led to more honest,
frequent discussions between patients
and their providers.

Tactic 4: Provide Patient-Centered Education
Care teams can engage patients early in the
care process and mitigate the fear and stress
of dealing with a new diagnosis by providing
effective patient education.
Unfortunately, many health systems miss this
critical patient engagement opportunity
because of inconsistent, misaligned, or
outdated patient education programs that
lack the data infrastructure to measure the
program’s effectiveness.

With subject matter expertise and analytics
support, organizations can develop an optimal
patient education program unique to patient
needs and measure the program’s success,
increasing patient and family engagement
throughout the care continuum.

For example, a children’s hospital in Texas
created an interdisciplinary team of experts to
evaluate and improve their diabetes patient
education program.
The analysis revealed opportunities to align
pediatric diabetes education with regional
and national diabetes standards, tailor
education delivery to patient needs instead
of using a one-size-fits-all approach, and
measure patient education initiatives.

To ensure that every child and their family
received the updated diabetes education
throughout the care process (and not just at
the end), the leadership team integrated
patient education into the workflow.
With patient education part of the care
process, providers could use data to identify
which patients have not received diabetes
education and work with their care teams to
understand why.

A comprehensive approach to patient
education allowed Texas Children’s Hospital to
standardize its pediatric education program,
increase interactions between diabetes
educators and patients and their families, and
improve overall patient engagement.
In the first year of its diabetes engagement
campaign, more than 70 percent of Texas
Children’s patients with diabetes had at least
one visit with a certified diabetes educator.

Patient Engagement Drives Better Outcomes
and Customized Care
When patients engage in care decisions, they
understand the role they play in the care team
and their health, increasing accountability.
Health systems can turn patients into partners
with access to comprehensive patient data to
identify areas in which providers can improve
patient engagement.

Patient Engagement Drives Better Outcomes
and Customized Care
Complete data sets allow healthcare leaders
to apply data-informed tactics to improve
patient satisfaction and health outcomes.
Activating patients throughout the care
process not only sets up care interventions
for success but also every member of the
care team, including the provider, patient,
and family.

For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

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Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
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Drive Better Outcomes with Four Data-Informed Patient Engagement Tactics

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Drive Better Outcomes with Four Data-Informed Patient Engagement Tactics