Healthcare is in the process of ‘levelling up’ with widescale digitisation of solutions to support clinicians, administrators and patients. However, to better improve the patient experience healthcare providers need to engage with patients more and encourage patient activation.
This has traditionally been done by literature (pamphlets, books etc) but is now being done by text or email alerts from healthcare providers and via patient portals, where individuals can access their medical records, personal information, educational resources, and contact information to speak with clinicians.
Patient engagement cannot happen without patient activation though – which we expand upon below – and that is the crux of this article: what patient activation is and how it ties in with patient engagement.
We also explore ways of “activating patients” i.e. encouraging their interest in their care, as well as how the NHS PAM tool works and how to potentially increase patient activation.
Following on from our article ‘What is patient flow management?’ we move on to evaluating how to go about improving patient flow.
Modern healthcare is undergoing necessary mass digitisation but while this process is going on it’s crucial that healthcare professionals (clinical, administrative, or managerial) evaluate all of the care procedures and processes currently in place to ensure they are still appropriate.
One such process is patient flow, which is also one of the biggest factors affecting care. The technological makeover of healthcare is being driven through on the basis of improving care for the individual. This can be seen on the basis of speeding up treatment, accommodating patients more with flexibility in appointments and treatment locations, engaging communication, reduced workload and duress for staff… the list goes on. Without adequate patient flow, none of this can be achieved. There’s no smart scheduling for appointments and staff rotas. There’s no rapid adjustments between wards and departments for bed usage or patient follow-ups.
In this article we will explore just how important patient flow is, as well as how important it is to improve patient flow, how to do this, and how the NHS might approach this from a strategic perspective. It is our hope that this can serve as a good practice guide with focus on improving patient flow.
Considering how many people are cared for in a hospital on a daily basis, how many members of staff a hospital employs, and how many different departments, teams and specialties there are, it’s a very sensible approach to implement a hospital management system (HMS).
Organisations need order, clarity and control. A HMS can provide this, and these days does so with the reliance on an information system powered by healthcare software. This can be cloud-based (remotely hosted) or held on an internal, private server – all depending on a hospital’s preference – but in both instances will help simplify what is a complicated oversight process.
In this article I will explain the functionality of a hospital management system, the early origins and the evolution of HMS in line with technological developments, as well as the many benefits to be had from these systems and the challenges facing management. After reading, you should be much better equipped to assess these systems yourself.
Ensuring health and care professionals have up-to-date information is crucial. Better information means better care can be provided by giving the most appropriate treatment.
At present your medical information exists in a unique record per healthcare organisation or provider you visit, be it your local GP, the pharmacy, a physiotherapist, or A&E. This means organisations need to request access to your existing information to build up a patient profile and your bigger health picture.
This isn’t convenient, but a shared care record is. Shared care records help caregivers and clinicians by collating all of a patient’s information, but it’s the interoperability of health and care software that gives them access to this information at the point of care throughout a patient’s journey.
Funding shortfall, staff shortages, and increased life expectancy are all putting huge pressure on the NHS, and other care groups are experiencing similar difficulties. By pursuing opportunities to improve care and make care provision more efficient, healthcare organisations can reduce some of this pressure – allowing them to continue to be there for people in need. Joined-up care is the future, and NHS shared care records are a way to achieve this.
Patient portals are an inevitable part of the modernisation and digitisation of healthcare. They are an opportunity for people to access and manage their own data, and the NHS, GP services, and other organisations are keenly pursuing these avenues to empower the public.
At The Access Group, we’re keenly seeking new opportunities to help with our software solutions. There are many possibilities for how a patient portal could be integrated with other tools such as electronic patient records, a mood diary, and even home monitoring kit.
With this in mind, we have delved into patient portals: what they are, examples of their implementation, and the pros and cons of using such digital avenues in healthcare.
Improving patient engagement is the big aspiration for healthcare services around the world. In this digital age, people are already interacting with numerous other services in their lives, and that engagement or accommodation is desirable – after all, it’s providing greater knowledge to a person managing their affairs. It’s empowering them to make better decisions.
In our previous articles (Patient Engagement explained, Patient Engagement strategies) we discussed what patient engagement is, why it matters to both patients and clinicians, and how healthcare organisations – public or private - are approaching this challenge.
In this fifth and final article in the series, we delve into how to increase patient engagement, and nine ways that healthcare providers can achieve better interaction with patients to ultimately improve care outcomes.
With modern healthcare striving to be ever more inclusive and accommodating of patient needs and wishes, digital patient engagement platforms are rapidly seeing an uptick in usage by healthcare services and providers.
The point of these patient engagement apps is to get patients onboard with their own care. Research shows that patient activation leads to better care outcomes, because a patient both understands the care they are receiving but also feels like they have control over the approach to their treatment or care.
As more solutions become available it will become more important to assess the quality of these solutions. Before that though we need to explore the technology at hand and the companies offering these solutions. In this article we will do just that, making you better equipped for future patient engagement decisions.
Patient engagement is an important process within modern healthcare. In our last blog, Patient Engagement explained, we discuss how actively consulting patients and their families, including them in their care plans, and offering them choices for their treatment and care has been proven by research to generate better patient outcomes – and to benefit healthcare providers.
There are considerations to be had during the measuring process. Patient data is protected by strict privacy laws, so confidentiality must be kept. Similarly, storing captured data properly is crucial – both for security but also for repeat usage and analysis in the future. Analysis also requires sufficient detail for the data to be useful; things like demographic information and patient type, so that trends can be derived.
By measuring patient engagement, healthcare providers – public or private – can identify areas that can be improved upon within their care provision. They can also highlight the patient successes too, correlating the engagement levels with care outcomes.
Patient engagement measures are crucial for patient activation and onboarding them in their own care. In this blog we explore what the goals are for patient engagement, how it is measured, and the tools used for measuring patient feedback and turning that into presentable data.
Virtual reality (VR) simulations initially started out as military trials in the 1960s, before branching out to public medical trials in the 1980s. The tech never died off due to a lack of interest, but stayed relatively dormant until the world around it advanced enough to properly enact the vision and potential.
That world is here now, and VR has grown in popularity in the past decade thanks to these rapid improvements in the technology, becoming a playground for gamers. Players put on a headset (or head-mounted display) and connect to a console or computer for their immersion, but VR could have benefits in other aspects of life.
Virtual reality healthcare is one such area. It might seem odd to pair virtual reality and healthcare, but there are avenues such as mental health care where the ability to safely explore and experience could be beneficial to treatment and recovery.
In this article we explore the use of virtual reality in healthcare; the specifics of what VR can do, how it can help patients, the challenges it poses, and the cost to implement this new technology – and whether the benefits warrant the investment.
Co-production might be a concept you are aware of if you work in either healthcare, social care or related services. Co-production has been growing in popularity over the years. It is an approach to find new ways to collaborate and exchange both training and resources to help deliver better person-centred care.
However, due to the pandemic a lot of local authorities and NHS Trusts stopped using a co-production approach due it taking time, money, and often there being mixed opinions within a team on what would benefit the community.
Now it has started to become a priority again with more and more local authorities looking to use the approach. But, how can it be implemented again without the problems that occurred before?
