“Is it
possible for a health care system to redesign its services to better
educate patients to deal with their immediate health issues and also
become more savvy consumers of medicine in the long run?” This
is an important question and even larger dilemma for the medical
profession to solve. I would also state that the patients need to
pay attention as this poses a question for patients -
“How do patients make good
choices?”
Two different articles from different
perspectives are very interrelated and important for both sides in
the near future. Even being aware of one side before I wrote this blog on the August 23, the blog posted by Nancy Finn on September 3
really brought the topics together for me. Both the medical
profession and the patients have a challenge before them and
solutions are not easy to come by. This also brings another question
into play - “Can both sides work together to solve this?”
I will say that for many, this will be
possible on both sides, but I wonder how we will bring those on both
sides that will oppose this very rigorously into the desired state of
learning. Many physicians are of the opinion that patients should
listen only to them, the doctors, and follow their directions
explicitly. On the patient side, there are many that will have no
desire to learn and will insist on following the doctor without
learning anything about the reasons or the medicine behind the
condition.
The importance of health literacy is
more important today than in the past for several reasons. People
that are literate become more adept at understanding health
information, tend to make more informed healthcare choices, become
better able to manage their chronic conditions, and in general have
significantly better outcomes than patients that remain health
illiterate. Patients that remain healthcare illiterate have higher
rates of medication errors, more emergency room visits,
hospitalizations, and increased likelihood of dying.
A number of health policy organizations
recognize that health literacy is important to individuals, and
benefits society because helping patients help themselves is an
important pathway to keeping down health care costs. Successful
self-management reduces disease complications and can cut down on
unnecessary emergency room visits and eliminate other wasteful
spending.
Organizations that promote proper
health literacy tend to do certain things very well. The ten (only
nine are listed) attributes in the report include items such as:
1. Making improving health literacy a priority at every level of the
organization;
2. Measuring health literacy and using those measurements to guide
their practices;
3. Taking into account the particular needs of the populations they
serve;
4. Avoiding stigmatizing people who lack health literacy;
5. Providing easy access to health information and assistance
navigating services;
6. Distributing easy-to-understand information across print,
audiovisual, and social media channels;
7. Taking health literacy into account when discussing medicines or
in other high-risk situations by using proven educational techniques,
such as the teach-back method;
8. Training the healthcare workforce in health communication
techniques; and
9. Letting patients know what their insurance policies cover and what
they are themselves responsible for paying.
When you consider what is on the plate
for patients, the medical decisions have changed from leaving the
choice of treatment entirely in the hands of your doctor to the
patient now needing to be informed and choose between treatment
choices. These decisions are often life altering, and it is now up
you or your families to choose which way to treat your medical
issues. This change has occurred because for many conditions:
(1) There are no clear-cut parameters with proven success;
(2) The medical experts differ regarding the best way; and
(3) Although there is an abundance of information about medical
issues, that information is often difficult to comprehend.
Nancy Finn accurately explains many of
the decisions we as patients may need to make and the task does look
daunting to say the least. What may seem simplistic on the surface,
can be very complicated when it is your life on the line. Healthcare
literacy is important and if you have great doctors that are willing
to take the time to educate you, the decisions will be difficult, but
you will have a solid base on which to make the decision.
This is why becoming an e-patient may
be a goal you need to set for yourself. Even then with all the
diseases and types of illnesses, this is a formidable task. This is
just one more reason that e-patients form groups that can mentor
others.
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