Understanding of Patient Engagement and its Impact on Healthcare Systems

Patient engagement is a growing scheme around healthcare systems. It is also a strategy to adapt to a situation (like the pandemic) in which patients are less likely to visit clinical providers in order to receive treatment alternatives. The Medical Institute (IOM) considers access to appropriate medical information and clinical knowledge to be a source of control over individuals’ healthrelated decisions [1]. While available information and patient education seems to be only a part of the concept. Activating patients to the extent that they take responsibility and actions to prevent further disease progression and obtain better wellness status depends on approaches beyond patient education. Nonetheless engaging patients guarantees better quality and lower cost, return on investment, improved outcome measures, informed adherence to care plan, and medication [2].

As regards, patient-related issues such as shortcomings in social determinants of health including health literacy, income, nutrition, and housing, causes patient engagement barriers [3]. That is why inequity drivers would negatively influence patients and families’ capacity to take an active role in engagement. It looks critical to know to what extent existing patient advocacy/engagement programs or technological solutions have enabled and mobilized patients to play crucial role in improving individual treatment or population outcomes. Eventually, how current engagement strategies are aligned with patients’ expected outcomes.

Patient engagement is primarily understood by the smooth flow of information between providers and patients to ensure timely access to the needed resources. To this end, technology developers have designed numerous versions of platforms facilitating appointments, documentation, monitoring, and evaluation of clinical performance. Furthermore, artificial intelligence fulfills digital communication platforms through analytics of big clinical databases to predict future trends in the clinical environment. Achieved insights accommodate supplier industries, insurers, and clinical providers’ intensity to obtain insights on the business environment and plan for proactive changes in their professional performance.

On a higher level of deliberate, patient engagement requires cultural views and an organizational atmosphere that values the patients as health right owners, efficient sources of improvement, and investment partners. In that situation, patient empowerment is presumed beneficial not only for patients and families but also for policy developers and clinical providers. Transformative thoughts and beliefs are needed to support patients for being an honest advocate and organizational partner who puts his/her health in our hands for the best of actions to achieve scientific, professional, and business goals. Smart organizations are sensitive to customer insights in which the user experience, behaviors, and decisions mirror the gaps in care and communication. In a mature type of organization, patient engagement embeds in policy, practice, management, and evaluations, in addition to the cultural values and leadership initiatives. Keeping patients active and influential to the clinical teams subsequent a chain of activities that bring “patient insights to tangible impacts.”

Traditionally, quality improvement efforts are designed by reviewing clinical facts and audits conducted and recorded by providers. Numerous studies indicate that patient-driven insights, which are provided from cognitive and behavioral data sources, guarantee informed decisions for improvement [4]. There is a remarkable difference between clinical insights and patient insights. Electronic medical records drive clinical insights to support clinical decisions and actions by providers. Most clinical insight systems are designed to capture, track, and save documents of clinical dimensions such as symptoms, signs, appointments, billing process, diagnostics, and results [5]. Payors and providers recognize the included data categories. Whereas, patients experience emotional changes, life quality challenges, behavioral needs, economic concerns, information gaps, decision requirements, employment issues, cultural conflicts, and family situations that influence the healing process somehow more influential than medications and clinical interventions. Patient insights exponentially add the value of medical data processing to draw a full picture of elements that influence the patient’s health outcomes.

None.

Author declare no conflict of interest.

1. Cryer D (2011) Defining Patient Engagement: CFAH.
2. Barry MJ, Edgman Levitan S, Billingham V (2012) Shared Decision Making- The Pinnacle of Patient-Centered Care. N Engl J Med 366(9): 780-781.
3. Gagliardi AR., Lemieux-Charles L, Brown AD, Sullivan T, Goel V (2008) Barriers to patient involvement in health service planning and evaluation: an exploratory study. Patient Educ Couns 70(2): 234-241.
4. Prey JE, Woollen J, Wilcox L, Sackeim AD, Hripcsak G, et al. (2014) Patient engagement in the inpatient setting: a systematic review. J Am Med Inform Assoc 21(4): 742-750.
5. Weiner JP (2012) Doctor-patient communication in the e-health era. Isr J Health Policy Res 1(1): 33.