Patient’s Engagement in Healthcare Policy Creation

 More often than not, when people are discussing healthcare issues, though patients are the most critical member of stakeholders, their issues are discussed as for those needing help and not those who can help in better health outcomes.

It is interesting that hardly do we hear policymakers speaking like they are, can be, or have ever been patients and so they provide policies that even with time can be detrimental or retrogressive even for them when they become patients.

The role and importance of patients in the broad spectrum of healthcare matters cannot be ignored. The more patients – current or past, are engaged in decisions making processes, the better it is for progressive development in the healthcare sector. Theirs are experiential and not theoretical and can and do give a clearer picture of the pros and cons of various issues in the sector, whether at a macro or micro level.

Patient engagement starts from an individual level to the national level. On a small scale, it involves the involvement of patients/potential patients in acquiring information regarding diseases, their symptoms, illnesses, and treatment/intervention options and taking decisions on the best option. On a more macro level, patient engagement includes interactions between policy and decision-makers and families, communities, and teams of medical personnel on the aforementioned topics. The engaging population as a preventive measure yields great benefits that help curb diseases or the intensity if one falls sick.

Jayesh Saini, CEO of Bliss Healthcare, says he has seen greater participation of patients in decisions on what services they should receive and in what manner, noting that it has made the service providers – whether the medical facilities or the insurers to not only think of their bottom-line as a key factor but also the expectations of the patients. He alluded to the fact that with an increase in communication through social media, people now express their encounters with service providers and this has had effects on how services are delivered. With time, even health packages are discussed with recipients being very critical players. It is now common to find service recipients rejecting packages that they feel are too little for too much a fee and negotiations have become commonplace. It is no longer maximum profits for providers at the detriment of the recipient of the services.

Patient engagement has greatly helped break the notion that because medics are experts, patients must receive whatever they are handed. The interactions even with their primary caretakers have helped, for example, change regimes of medications with better health outcomes. This kind of patient engagement has been found to help reduce medical bills, visits to health facilities, hospitalization, the onset of chronic conditions, and emergency cases, and even prevent loss of organs or life as the provider and recipient work in a partnership for the best outcomes.

According to Jayesh Saini, service providers, whether physicians or facilities with good patient engagements tend to have a higher patient population due to good word-of-mouth recommendations. He however pointed out that though this is an ideal situation, it does not always work out. One of the challenges to this engagement is normally due to the time factors. Having discussions with a patient at a time can be time-consuming and this is normally limited considering the long queues that are common in health facilities, especially for outpatient services. The patients who are in the queue do not make things better as they complain about doctors taking too long with the patients. At the same time, the service providers have to either see fewer patients or engage more personnel if an ideal patient engagement was to be reached. This is a financial and resources-requiring decision that has to be considered seriously to determine if it makes economic sense for the provider. This can give a negative rating for the facility. He says the masses needed to be educated on patient engagement and advised on expected turnaround times so that they can have patience. This would include information regarding interruptions if there is a life-threatening emergency. It has been found that the most effective patient engagement plans work with specific people groups (such as a cardiologist who deals only with heart-related conditions) and for physicians who work on an appointment basis with a specified number of patients per given time. The advantage is that with this kind of people, the consultations are more intimate, the patients will tend to be loyal, keep appointments, and therefore reduced visits to the clinic and thereby enabling more patients at different dates.

Besides engaging patients at the point of service delivery, they can also be involved during enrolment, especially in insurance covers. This can be done in groups instead of in individual cases. Corporates can also require their service providers to provide in-house patient engagement. This can be general or disease-based engagements. Where there is an observed need for individualized engagement, arrangements are made during such meetings. Health talks have especially been found to be beneficial as individuals recognize and correlate symptoms that they have experienced and thus pursue clinical and other investigations to either rule out or confirm a suspected condition and have proper measures taken either way. In the confines of private rooms in some organizations, patients who may be having psychological or emotional issues are taken care of in such engagements with medics – psychologists or psychiatrists while they still continue with their work, therefore, allowing them not to feel excluded.