Engaged patients have better outcomes

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page

Picture: Judy Murphy

eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

HiNZ 2018 keynote speaker Judy Murphy says that health IT has a role to play in engaging patients to take increased responsibility for their health and wellbeing.

People should be encouraged to be active participants in their health and care, says HiNZ 2018 keynote speaker Judy Murphy.

Murphy is chief nursing officer at IBM Global Healthcare and will be speaking at HiNZ 2018 on health IT’s role in patient engagement for population health management.

Murphy says patient engagement means “citizens, individuals, people being activated to do things like disease management, or to think about monitoring their own blood pressure or eat better or have a better exercise regime.

“When I’m involved in my own care I not only know what’s going on better and participate better, but I end up getting better outcomes,” says Murphy.

She says that while some people are not interested in being active in their care, most are used to the self-service idea in other areas of their life such as banking, airline or hotel reservations and shopping.

These same individuals now want more control over their care, but do not always have the tools they need to be an engaged patient, such as access to their medical records online.

Murphy says that in the US, where the private healthcare system means patients can shop around for health services, those providing patient portals and encouraging patient engagement get the most customers.

She explains that different groups of people need to be “activated” to be involved in their care in different ways, depending on what motivates them.

For example, older people may be happier doing a video conference with their doctor if it means they don’t have to travel all the way to a hospital and worry about parking or arranging for someone to take them.

Murphy says a lot of providers who want to encourage patient engagement start with a patient portal.

“Not just have it but encourage people to sign up for it and show them how to use it,” she explains.

Other ideas are to involve patients more by doing things like handover meetings on hospital wards in front of patients, so everyone knows what is happening and is agreed on the way forward.

Murphy says healthcare is moving away from being an “episodic illness model” in which people are treated only at times when they need care, towards a “continuum wellness model”, which is the management of health and wellness and includes preventative care continuously throughout the person’s life.

As patients only see health professionals at certain points throughout the year, this means people need to take increasing responsibility for their own health, and care providers should be supporting and encouraging their patients to do this, she says.

The HiNZ annual conference is being held on 21–23 November 2018 at Wellington’s TSB Arena.

Read more about the HiNZ Conference - click here >>