Patient Engagement in Low Value Care – Empower
This technical assistance package aims to provide insights and tools to implement patient engagement around overuse in your organization. Use all four components or focus on one element. Each section is broken into sections by time commitment:
- If you have five minutes, check out our top five insights from each area.
- If you have twenty minutes, read sample scripts, review tools or listen to a short podcast.
- If you have an hour to dedicate, read the source journal articles, watch a webinar or join our learning network to connect with others.
If you have 5 minutes…
Five Things to Consider to foster shared decision-making
Seek Patient Participation. Encourage your patient’s involvement in the health care decision-making process. Emphasize the importance of patient participation for satisfactory patient outcomes.
Educate Patients on Treatment Options. Utilize evidence-based decision aids; assess current patient knowledge; and explain the spectrum of available treatment options and subsequent benefits/risks.
Understand Patient Values. Through active listening and open-ended questioning, encourage your patient to discuss which health outcomes and treatment goals he/she prioritizes most.
Support Patients in Making a Decision. Help your patient generate a decision. Allot additional time if your patient desires. Confirm the final decision with your patient; verify next steps and schedule follow-up appointments.
Check-In with Your Patient on Their Decision. Follow-up with your patient on his or her health status. If necessary, revisit the decision with your patient, and determine if an alternative treatment option should be implemented.
If you have 20 minutes…
Read
- Why Physicians Should Trust Patients Viewpoint on trusting patients in order to create trust from the patient.
- United Community and Family Services Case study of engaging patients at an FQHC in shared decision making.
- Engagement-sensitive Decision Making: Training Doctors to Sustain Patient Engagement in Medical Consultations. Patient Engagement: A consumer-centered model to innovate healthcare. 2015.
- 5 Essential Steps of Shared-Decision Making: The SHARE Approach AHRQ’s shared decision making conversation starter kit
- Helping Patients Take Care of Themselves Newsletter article describing a practice that promoted empowerment through education
Do
- Consider using the Choosing Wisely “Five Questions to Ask Your Doctor Before You Get Any Test, Treatment, or Procedure” with patients in your practice.
- Identify and use condition-specific Choosing Wisely patient materials in your practice for targeted low-value tests and treatments
- Additional Materials for Patients: These downloadable resources can be used by clinicians to educate patients about Choosing Wisely. Several of these items can be posted, played or placed in waiting or exam rooms, or given to patients as handouts
If you have sixty minutes…
Read
- Shared Decision-Making With Choosing Wisely Journal article on how to use Choosing Wisely as part of maternal health shared decision making.
- Engagement-sensitive Decision Making: Training Doctors to Sustain Patient Engagement in Medical Consultations
Book chapter on sustaining engagement with patients. - Impact of Patient Requests on Provider-Perceived Visit Difficulty
Journal article discussing patient requests for tests that may not be appropriate - Patient-Provider Communication: the Rise of Patient Engagement.
Article reviews approaches to addressing barriers to good clinician-patient conversations
Watch
- Talking with Caregivers about Overuse Webinar that discusses the different dynamics of discussing overuse with a caregiver
Do
- Use the tools from Mayo Clinic Shared Decision Making National Resource Center
- Listen to “Conversations on Medical Overuse,” a set of 3 podcasts developed by Health Partners that provide examples of a simple clinician-patient conversation, a complicated conversation, and a polarized conversation, that illustrate optimal approaches to conversations on overuse.
