Patient Engagement Research Paper

The Secret to Patient Engagement – More engaging physicians.

If you ask people involved in Patient Engagement about how engaged they are in their own health, the most common reply you will get would be something along the lines of, “I try to take care of myself by doing X or Y or Z.”

About 82% of US adults have a regular doctor whom they visit at least once a year with the average number of visits being 3 per year, which, in fact, is double the number of visits made by people with chronic conditions.

Obviously, one would think that this level of patient engagement would be immensely beneficial to physicians, administrators, health IT vendors and others involved. But that wouldn’t be correct. Let us see why.

Physicians, administrators, health

Most physicians still relate to their patients using a peculiar communication style where they act as the clinicians knows best, does the most talking and makes almost all decisions for the patient. Patients are encouraged to be passive and compliant rather than being engaged.

Health IT treats patients as stupid and unneeded when it comes to engagement. They ignore the fact that 85% of adults want to be able to interact with their physician face-to-face whenever they want, regardless of their showing willingness to use secure email, patient portals or any other such technology. People are not stupid. They realize that Health IT wants to put technology between themselves and their doctor. A number of patients have stated that laptops and computers in the exam room interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. This is clearly not servingpatient engagement.

The only certain technique to improve patient engagement is to be more engaging to the patient. Which means being more patient-centered. The patient-centered attitude should reflect in the things being done for the patient,the way physicians talk and listen to them, the way products and services are designed, and how patient engagement is