Patient-Centered Medical Homes Need To Become More “Patient-Centered”

A recent study in Medical Care about Horizon BCBS’s Medical Home pilot reminded me of the expression a “house does not make a home.”   Or in this case how building a medical house to the spec (as laid out 3rd parties like NCQA and JACHO)  is not the same as building a medical home that is truly patient-centered .   As it turns out, researchers involved in the Horizon study claimed not to have found any significant differences between PCMH practices and non-PCMH practices.

Don’t get me wrong, my hat is off to the thousands upon thousands of primary care practices from New Jersey to Hawaii that have put in long hours going the extra mile to become recognized as Patient Centered Medical Homes.  Due to the efforts of these first generation PCMH pioneers, and their health plan partners, millions of people now have unprecedented access to primary care physicians providing:

• Physician-led team care
• Electronic records (EMR/Registry)
• Embedded care coordinators
• PHRs and web portals

Yes, many of the PCMH pilots, now into their 4^th or 5^th year, are showing promising results with reported reductions in ER visits, hospitalizations and 30-day hospital readmissions.  These pilots are also reporting improvements in HEDIS-related quality indicators.

But while team care, care coordination and EMRs may increase practice efficiency, there is nothing inherently patient-centered about these “things.”

That’s because patient-centered care is a philosophy of care delivery…not simply a punch list of HIT and staffing requirements.  Crossing the Quality Chasm defines patient-centered care as “respectful of and responsive (where practicable) to individual patient preferences, needs, and values”; or as Berwick is quoted as saying, “nothing about me (the patient) without me.” Patient-centered care occurs between people – not things – and manifests itself in the way the clinician and patient talk with and relate to one another, e.g. patient-centered communications.

With all the attention placed on building out the HIT and staffing infrastructure,  this first generation of PCMH pilots, with some notable exceptions, has lost sight of the most what makes a medical house and patient-centered medical home – notably the relationship between the patient and the clinician, beginning with the quality of clinicians’ patient-centered communication skills.

Yes, many accredited PCMH’s have patient advisory boards and conduct patient satisfaction surveys.   But as researchers like Street and Epstein have suggested,  relying just on patients’ impressions and ratings of “patient-centeredness” may provide false reassurance given that many patients have never experienced anything but suboptimal care and physicians that employ a paternalistic, decidedly un-patient-centered style of talking to patients.  (Until recently, I myself had never encountered a real patient-centered physician).

As I discussed in an earlier post, the majority of physicians today employ a paternalistic, physician-directed style of communicating with patients.   As such, there is no evidence to suggest that the patient communication skills of physicians practicing in accredited PCMHs are any more patient-centered that their counter parts in traditional practices.

Based upon the literature, what is absent in this first generation of PCMH pilots is any serious, systematic attention given to assessing and/or improving the quality of the patient-centered communication skills of physicians and their care teams.   This oversight is worth noting since the benefits expected by policy makers and underwriters of PCMHs and ACOs under health care reform have been linked in the research to the strong patient-centered communications and not HIT, team care and care coordinators.

Why Is This Important If PCMH Pilots Are Reporting Positive Outcomes?  

The early saving being reported by many PCMH pilots may well represent the “low hanging fruit.” This is not an unreasonable supposition given that most physician practices have never had EMRs, care coordinators, or team care prior to the PCMH pilots.  As is so often the case, within a short few years, this low hanging fruit will disappear.

But there is another way. Thirty years of research has demonstrated the benefits of patient-centered communications when it comes to increased productivity, greater patient engagement; better outcomes, lower health care use/cost and superior patient experiences.

Going forward, PCMHs, ACOs and their sponsors will need to look past HIT and team care to the quality of their patient-centered communication skills if they are to assume the role envisioned for them under health care reform.

That’s my opinion…what’s yours?

Note:  Later this Summer, Mind the Gap will be announcing the Adopt One! Challenge TM. for physicians and their care teams.  The goal of the challenge is to encourage physicians and their care teams to adopt one new patient-centered communication skill within 2014. 

Sign-up to learn more about this one-of-a-kind “Challenge”:

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Sources:

Epstein RM, Fiscella K, Lesser CS, Stange KC.  Why the nation needs
a policy push on patient-centered health care. Health Affairs. 2010;29(8):1489-1495.

Ming Tai-Seale, et al.  Recognition as a Patient-Centered Medical Home: Fundamental or Incidental? Annals of Family Medicine. 2013;11:S14-S18.

Street, R., et al.  The Values and Value of Patient-Centered
Care.  Annals of Family Medicine.  2011;9:100-103.

Shared Decision Making – Not Ready For Prime Time – Nor Evidently Is Patient-Centered Care

When it comes to delivering truly patient-centered care…how are providers supposed to know when they have “arrived”?   According to Michael Berry, MD, President of the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation, providers will know they have achieved the “pinnacle of patient-centered care” when they routinely engage their patients in shared decision-making (SDM).

In theory, shared decision-making (aka collaborative decision-making) is what is supposed to happen between patients and their doctors when faced with a difficult choice.  Clinicians engaging in shared decision-making would provide patients with information pertaining to the need for the treatment, the available options, as well as the benefits and risks.  But patient-centered clinicians would also do something else. They would attempt to work with patients to arrive at a decision they could both live with.  A kind of “shared mind” that takes into consideration their clinical perspective as well as the patient’s perspective – their preferences, needs, and values (which ideally have been captured over the course of the patient-provider relationship).

The Problem Is That Most Physicians Don’t Really Engage Patients In Either Shared Decision Making  

 A 2003 study surveyed U.S. physicians (N=1,217) preferences and actual practices regarding shared decision-making.  Table 1 presents a summary of findings from this study.

Table 1

Decision Making Style	What Physicians Preferred	What Physicians Actually Do
Shared decision-making	58%	37%
Physician-dominant decision-making	28%	43%
No patient involvement	9%	13%
Patient dominant decision-making	5%	7%

While most physicians in the study may philosophically believe in and prefer shared decision-making…as this data indicates that is not what most physicians in the study reported actually doing.  In fact, 56% of physicians reported that they actually engaged in decision-making that was physician-dominated (with some patient involvement) or totally physician-dominated decision-making behavior (absent any patient involvement).

The Barriers To Shared Decision Making?

The barriers to SDM include the usual suspects:

•  Lack of time during the visit
• Not having access to the right decision support aids tools and training their use
• Physician attitudes about patient’s willingness to engage in shared decision-making
• Provider reliance upon a physician-directed (versus patient-centered) style of communicating with patients

The Take Away – Why Shared Decision Making Matters

•  SDM is the right thing to do – the benefits associated with SDM include better outcomes, lower utilization and cost, lower malpractice risk and enhanced patient trust and satisfaction

•  SDM is a great way to be engaging to patients – it is a way to get patients involved in their care in a meaningful way they can relate to.

• To be eligible to participate in Medicare’s Shared Savings Program, Accountable Care Organizations must implement processes to promote patient engagement, including shared decision-making.

As readers of Mind the Gap know, I am a proponent of the adoption of patient-centered communication by providers, beginning with primary care.   Shared decision-making has rightly been identified as a leading indicator when it comes to assessing the “patient-centeredness’ of a physician practice.   So before you go around telling everyone how patient-centered your provider teams are first do a reality check.  Because if you aren’t regularly engaging your patients in shared decision making you are not there yet.

That’s my opinion…what’s your?

Sources:

Heisler, M. et al. Physicians’ participatory decision-making and quality of diabetes care processes and outcomes: results from the triad study. Chronic Illness. 2009 Sep;5(3):165-76

Street, R. et al  The importance of communication in collaborative decision making: facilitating shared mind and the management of uncertainty. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 17 (2011) 579–584.

Frosch, D., et al. An Effort To Spread Decision Aids In Five California Primary Care Practices Yielded Low Distribution, Highlighting Hurdles. Health Affairs. 32, no.2 (2013):311-320.

HIT-Driven Patient Engagement Is A Bust – Effective Patient Engagement Begins With The Doctor-Patient Relationship

I hate saying I told you so.  But to quote myself…”patient engagement is a physician-patient communications challenge and not an HIT (Health Information Technology) challenge.”

Just take a look at the Mayo Clinic’s patient portal experience which was discussed at a HIMMS 2013 and reported on in HIT industry press.

The Headline

Mayo Clinic Struggles To Meet Stage 2 Meaningful Use Thresholds For Engaging Patients.

Always innovating, the Mayo Clinic some three years ago introduced a web-based portal to share information with their patients.  During that time some 240,000 patients have signed up for online accounts.  That’s pretty impressive.  But there’s a problem.  A BIG PROBLEM.

According to Eric Manley, product manager of global solutions at the Mayo Clinic, they are having a hard time “getting more than 5% “of all the patients who registered with the patient portal to actually use it.   You see in order to meet Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements, and enjoy the benefits that come with meeting this criteria, people actually have to use the portal to access their own health information.  You just can’t build a portal and in Mayo’s case have fewer than 12,000 unique patients actually use it.    Actually you can…hospitals and physicians do it all the time…they just can’t get incentive payments for their efforts.

 So What Went Wrong?

It’s not like the folks at Mayo haven’t tried.  Mayo’s patient portal offer all the requisite techie gizmos – giving patients access to their medical record, lab results, appointment schedule, and lots of health information.  They also recently introduced their first patient-directed mobile health app call “Patient” which makes it easy for people to access their health information online.   Mayo even has a Center for Innovation to figure this kind of stuff out.

Upon reflection Manley admits that “simply making services available doesn’t cut it,” he said. “Unless you are engaging patients, you won’t meet meaningful use requirements. [Messaging and other mechanisms] need to be a part of your practice.”

But Wait – I Thought Patient Portals, EMRS and Health Apps Were Patient Engagement Strategies?? You Mean We Need To Do More?

Manley is quoted as saying that “patient engagement has been a part of what Mayo has done for a long time, meaningful use, especially Stage 2, is a catalyst to kick it up a notch.”

Let’s face it.  Meaningful Use maybe a good way to get providers to adopt badly needed HIT improvements – but it not a great way to force patients to “engage” with you.   Here’s why.

1)    Forcing patients to do anything is wrong and antithetical to the whole idea of patient-centeredness…even if you think it is in the patient’s best interest. Meeting Meaningful Use seems to take precedence over what the patient wants.  Manley is quoted as saying “just having it [information and portals] out there isn’t enough”…”It’s making the patient use them.”

2)    Patients want to engage with other people regarding their health, particularly their physicians. Health after all is an intensely personal and social affair.  Mobile health apps and email just can’t give patients want they want – to be listened to and understood.  Plus 85% of people want face-to-face access to their physician when they want it.  Patients know that HIT threatens to get in between them and their doctors.

3)    The content on most patient portals is not particularly relevant or engaging after the first 10 seconds….at least from the patient’s perspective.   After all, cognitive involvement is a prerequisite of meaningful engagement and it tough to be interested and spend time thinking about information that is not in context (of a medical encounter), you don’t understand, find boring, completely inaccurate or irrelevant.

So What Is The Solution?

There’s no question that if done right patient portals can and do work.  One need look no further than Kaiser Permanente, Group Health and the VA for great examples.  The key to their success…and hopefully every provider’s success…is integration.

Health care for us patients occurs within the context of social relations with our physicians.  To be engaging…the information you want to share with us needs to be relevant to us from our perspective, come from our physician and be integrated into our overall care plan.    Only then will we have the trust and confidence that the information is ours…and is something we need to pay attention to.  We focus on our health while we are in the doctor’s office…if you really want to engage us…do it there.

That’s my opinion…what’s yours?

3 First Principles For Evaluating Patient-Facing HIT Solutions

With the HIMSS13 Conference next week we can expect to hear a lot about how health information technology (HIT) and e-Health is expected to challenge and change the way health care now and in years to come.  To be sure great strides have been made in the adoption of electronic medical records, decision support, and patient web portals… with the promise of more to come.  Health Apps, in spite of their painfully slow uptake by many consumers, press forward with innovative new tools.

Yet in order to realize the full promise of patient-facing like EMRs, PHRs, patient portals and the like, we need to be more mindful of the following “first principles.”

First Principles #1 – Health care delivery and healing occurs in the context of interpersonal relationships.

Today, as in the past, health care is delivered within the context of interpersonal relationships, e.g., the physician-patient relationship.  Sir William Osler, the father of modern medicine, recognized this along with the importance of a clinician’s communication skills when he said “listen to the patient and they will tell you what is wrong.”   Today, as in Osler’s time, encouraging patients to “tell their story” is the hallmark of good communication skills.  Eliciting the patient’s story is also a hallmark of strong healing relationships…since the simple act of “talking” and “feeling heard” have been shown to have clear therapeutic benefits.

The same is true with the intensely interpersonal act of “laying on of hands.”  “Touch” as a method of healing dates back to biblical times and beyond.   Today, physicians like Abraham Verghese, MD continue to speak to about therapeutic value of touch as practiced during patient exams in both the hospital and ambulatory settings.  These same physicians caution us against losing sight of the central role and value of the physician-patient relationship in the false belief that technology will one day be capable of replacing the personal physician.

First Principles #2 – HIT cannot compensate for weak physician-patient relationships or poor physician-patient communication skills.   

We hear today about how primary care physicians are very busy…and getting even busier.  EMR systems, e-visits, decision support tools, patient portals and the like are touted as solutions for saving time, increasing quality, etc.  While all this may be true, a great EMR system or secure e-mail visits cannot turn a physician with sub-optimal patient communication skills into a patient-centered Marcus Welby, MD.  It will probably make things worse.

Absent strong, physician-patient relationships and equally strong patient-centered communication skills, such HIT investments are like building castles upon sand.

Another hallmark of patient-centered communication is a “meeting of the minds” between patients and their physicians regarding issues like the visit agenda, the accuracy and severity of the diagnosis and which treatment options will work best.  Unfortunately since many physicians today continue to employ a physician-directed style of communicating with patients…the patient’s perspective is seldom sought…and a meeting of the minds never has a chance to occur.   Even if EMRs accommodated the patient’s perspective, the clinician first has to ask the patient…and that just isn’t happening.

 First Principles #3 – Beware of unintended consequences

Many HIT professionals will quickly dismiss the above first principles cited above in the name of improving physician productivity.  After all, given today’s shortage of primary care physicians we have no choice but to layer on more HIT like EMRS and self-help patient portals.  But as with anything, one needs to be prepared for the consequences.  And there are always consequences.

In addition to improving productivity, health care professionals cite patient engagement as yet another reason to invest in HIT.  But is that really the case?

We have all seen the research citing how patients would “like” secure e-mail with their doctor, online appointment scheduling, access to their doctor’s notes, etc.   Who in their right mind would not like this?  But liking is not the same as using.  Of perhaps more importance is the finding that the vast majority of patients (85%) want to know that they will still have the ability to see their doctor face-to-face when needed after they have access to the above conveniences .   People aren’t dumb.  We/they know that technology is increasingly getting in between us/them and our/their physician.  Provider organizations that try and channel patients into substituting web portals and PHRs for physician office visits run the risk of pushing patients/members into the waiting arms of their competitors.

A recent study of decision support tools underscores yet another unintended consequence – loss of trust in their physician.  Interestingly, certain patients saw the use of computer decision support tools as a reflection of their physician’s clinical knowledge.   That is, physicians that used decision support tools were perceived as being less knowledgeable than physicians that didn’t employ them.  Since clinical skills are a driver of patient trust, the risk of encouraging physicians to “engage” patients by using decision support tools is that you may well be disengaging them by increasing their distrust.

So What’s The Take Away?

We need to recognize that there are fundamental first principles concerning the delivery of healing and health care.  To that extent that HIT professionals and those that write the checks for HIT understand these principles one has a better chance of meeting their expectations.

Here are three questions that need to be considered when evaluating any patient-facing HIT solution:

1. Does technology support or detract from the physician-patient relationship in a meaningful way?
2. Does the technology presuppose the presence of strong physician-patient relations and physician-patient communication skills?
   Do you even know what kind of patient communication skills your physicians have?
3. What are the potential unintended consequences of adopting the proposed technology?

That’s what I think…what’s your opinion?

Sources

Agarwa, R. et al.   If We Offer it, Will They Accept? Factors Affecting Patient Use Intentions of Personal Health Records and Secure Messaging.    Journal of Medical Internet Research 2013;15(2):e43.

Want Your ACO To Succeed? …Then You Better Focus On Improving How Your Doctors & Patients Communicate

The basic premise of the Accountable Care Organizations is simple enough.  By incentivizing providers (physicians and hospitals) to assume financial responsibility for coordinating the health care of a defined patient population, it is possible to increase the quality of care while decreasing the cost of care delivery.

For ACOs to succeed, experts tell us that 3 things are required: 1) health information technology is needed to track and manage patient populations, 2) redesigned care delivery processes are needed to support patient care coordination, and 3) the right set of provider financial incentives must be in place.

But The “Experts” Have Overlooked Perhaps The Most Important Requirement

The improvements in quality and cost effectiveness in large part are predicated upon providers being able to engage patients with the goal of changing their health behavior.  

The problem is that most physicians lack the patient-centered communication skills needed to engage patients in their own health care not to mention persuade patients to change their health behavior. 

An Example – Physician and Patient “Meeting of the Minds” 

I think we can all agree that “telling patients what to do” is not an effective patient engagement or behavior management strategy.  After all, if patients don’t agree with or understand the rationale for a recommendation from their doctor, they are not likely to comply with it.

Rather, a meeting of the minds by physicians and patients is needed…and that requires physicians  understanding the patient’s perspective.  The evidence bears this out.  Higher ratings of trust, satisfaction, and intention to adhere occur when patients see themselves as similar to their physicians in personal beliefs, values, and communication.[1]

The problem is that physicians and patients often disagree on even the most fundamental issues…and herein lies the problem:

• Doctors & patients disagree on the principal reasons for office visits 53% of the time.[2]
• There is “substantial discordance” between the problems patients describe to physicians and the symptoms that physicians document in the EMR.[3]
• For diabetic patients who cited pain or depression as their top health concern their physicians rated these conditions “as likely to affect the patient’s health outcomes” in only 9% and 32% of cases respectively. (Remember, 95% of the treatment for diabetes is patient self care). [4]
• 41% of patients disagree with their physician as to whether their presenting symptoms represented a psychological versus a medical problem. [5]
• Physician perceptions of “how pleased, cheerful, relieved, worried, angry, and disappointed” they thought the patients were during office visits differed significantly from patient rating of how they actually felt. [6]
• Physicians tend to underestimate the patient’s desire for health information in 65% of visits.[6]

So What’s The Take Away?

Many physicians today are ill prepared to assume the role or financial responsibility of care coordination (or care management) given their lack of patient-centered communication skills.  Notice I didn’t mention lack of time since effective use of patient-centered communication skills over time can actually save providers time.

Unless and until medical groups, hospitals, health plans, CMS, and ACOs address this critical shortcoming through providing physicians with the  training, tools and resources needed to develop and refine patient-centered communication skills, ACOs will not deliver on their promise of more effective and efficient medical care.

That’s my opinion. What’s yours?

Sources:

[1] Street, R. et al. (2008) Understanding Concordance in Patient-Physician Relationships: Personal and Ethnic Dimensions of Shared Identity. Annals of Family Medicine. 6:198-205.

[2] Greer, J. and H. R. (2006). Predictors of Physician-Patient Agreement on Symptom Etiology in Primary Care. Psychosomatic Medicine, 282, 277-282.

[3] Stein, T. et al. (1999) Inaccuracies in physicians’ perceptions of their patients. Medical Care.  Nov;37(11):1164-8.

[4] Keulers, B. J., Scheltinga, M. R. M., Houterman, S., Van Der Wilt, G. J., & Spauwen, P. H. M. (2008). Surgeons underestimate their patients’ desire for preoperative information. World Journal of Surgery, 32(6), 964-70.

[4] Street, R. et al. (2008) Understanding Concordance in Patient-Physician Relationships: Personal and Ethnic Dimensions of Shared Identity. Annals of  Family Medicine, 6:198-205.

[5] Freidin, R., et al. (1980). Patient Physician Concordance in Problem Identification. Annals of Internal Medicine, (93), 490-493.

[6]Stein, T. et al., Inaccuracies in Physicians’ Perceptions of Their Patients.  Medical Care. 1999 Nov;37(11):1164-8.

[7] Pakhomov, S. et al. (2008). Agreement between Patient-reported Symptoms and their Documentation in the Medical Record. American Journal Of Managed Care, 14(8), 530-539.