SPM Past President Michael Millenson reports that the Urban Institute has published a paper he co-authored with Bob Berenson: The Road to Making Patient-Centered Care Real: Policy Vehicles and Potholes. Michael writes:
This is the most comprehensive look ever at the current state of patient-centered care activities that related to the actual clinical encounter. (Not included are research, such as PCORI activities; and regulatory activities, such as FDA outreach to patients.)
The paper examines the legislation driving change as well as, crucially, looking at the evidence in the medical literature and the measurement issues involved in turning patient-centeredness from ideal to real.
Bottom line, to me: when you tie patient empowerment to patient (as the new MACRA law is going to do with Medicare reimbursement, and as others are doing), providers will listen.
About the MACRA law: “On April 14, 2015, a large bipartisan majority in Congress passed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). President Obama signed the MACRA into law on April 16, 2015. The MACRA … establishes a new framework for rewarding clinicians for value over volume, and streamlines other existing quality reporting programs into one new system.”
I am both a Patient, Advocate and PFCC Council Member, all voluntary. MACRA will cause some to be on Alert, that can be positive, starting on the highest level, and seeping down. Somewhere in the middle, it won’t have much effect at all, except for the Patient and Family.
Until all employees/staff understand the interaction with the patient on a constant basis impacts the outcome, little will change.
At this point in time, there is resistance in many locations throughout the USA, to consider the patient at all. Cancer facilities are high in failure to heal the patient as well as the disease. Schedulers are a close second.
“Virginia Slims, You’ve Come A long Way Baby,” in promoting a killer product, had it half right. Integrative Medicine is trying, Evidence Based is fighting all the way. IMHO.
Coordinate and Cooperate, has a very long ardous way to go.
What part of the U.S. government is tracking how many U.S. people go offshore for care, real care?