How Patient-Centered Care Improves Patient Outcomes

What is Patient-Centered Care?

The patient-centered care (PCC) model enhances the way providers interact with patients during the care delivery process. Clinicians that show compassion and empathy toward patients are more likely to achieve meaningful, positive doctor-patient relationships. Indeed, care teams that prioritize PCC have a proven approach to improving patient satisfaction and increasing patient retention.

Though healthcare organizations understand the importance of the PCC model, some facilities need further insight into the approach to determine how it can benefit care delivery. This post explores the value of patient-centered care, and it uncovers three ways organizations can implement the approach across their clinical departments.

Components of Patient-Centered Care

The PCC model allows clinical leaders and caregivers to build strong, collaborative interprofessional relationships with patients. Through interprofessional collaboration (IPC), providers work with patients to better understand their needs and strategize to ensure that all patients have a positive experience. Simply put, IPC gives health workers the opportunity to make patients feel heard, respected and valued.

PCC requires organizations to invest in patient-centric technology that modernizes the way healthcare providers work. Laura Anderson, senior vice president and chief product officer of Change Healthcare, discusses how technology can support an organization’s patient-centric initiatives.

According to Anderson, “Organizations are using cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence to look at social determinants of health … and more. With this information, organizations can design workflows and technology strategies around the patient and what they need.” As implied by Anderson, advanced technology provides factual knowledge for providers and takes the guesswork out of care.

Interoperability in healthcare facilitates the sharing of information between providers during the patient journey. Applications, resources and systems communicate with each other to deliver the right contextual information to the right provider regardless of location.

Joerg Schwarz, industry strategy and interoperability solution director of Infor, states that, “Interoperability has … expanded beyond the four walls of the hospital … nowadays, hospitals exchange data with outpatient care providers—from primary care physicians (PCPs) … to home healthcare agencies and post-acute providers.” Readily available data breaks down silos in hospitals, and it allows interdisciplinary care teams (ICTs) to make evidence-based decisions that effectively improve patient outcomes.

Altogether, three key components of the PCC approach include:

• Engaging with patients: Healthcare workers must establish “family-like” relationships with patients. It is crucial that care professionals show empathy and listen to patients’ needs. Providers can transform patient-provided data into actionable and meaningful insights. Facilities that build strong doctor-patient relationships can greatly improve their Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores.

• Investing in advanced technology: Organizations must invest in advanced, reasonably priced technology to streamline care delivery workflows for practitioners. For instance, clinical communication and collaboration (CC&C) systems enable providers to securely message each other on mobile, and the platforms help improve the responsiveness of clinicians when patients need immediate assistance.

• Prioritizing interoperability in healthcare: Interoperability is about providing better care, streamlining workflows and breaking down barriers to critical information. Stakeholders are building momentum by defining standards and working together to make interoperability a reality. Healthcare organizations must take interoperability into account when investing in technology, new processes, skills training and staffing.

OnPage Features for Healthcare Organizations

The OnPage CC&C system consists of a web console and HIPAA-compliant mobile application that increases the productivity of healthcare personnel. Features of the complete OnPage collaboration platform include: 

• Real-time HIPAA messaging and persistent mobile alerts
• Unlimited push notifications that bypass the mute switch on mobile
• Digital on-call schedules for care team rotations
• Configurable escalation policies
• Automated high or low-priority mobile alerts (i.e., priority paging)
• Contextual file attachments for better care team messaging
• Audit trails, presence statuses and post-incident reports
• Scalable integrations with leading electronic health record (EHR) software

OnPage also offers direct patient-doctor communication via dedicated lines with live call routing functionality. These patient-centered capabilities enable patients to reach on-call clinicians by dialing one phone number. Direct communication enhances physician accessibility, care delivery and patient experience.

OnPage Helps Organizations Achieve Patient-Centered Care

The largest home healthcare and hospice organization in the U.S. needed a solution to streamline its clinical communications workflow between patients living in their homes and their care teams. With OnPage’s CC&C dedicated lines in place, providers experienced streamlined communication workflows and improved patient outcomes due to a reduction in response times. 

Judit Sharon, chief executive officer (CEO) of OnPage, discusses how organizations can achieve PCC by using modern communication software, such as the OnPage CC&C solution. According to Sharon, “Clinical teams [must] embrace digital transformation to gain a greater degree of situational awareness and collaborate to deliver effective patient-centered care during [critical events].” Communication tools improve the quality, speed and cost of care by allowing more precise conversations. These advanced tools also reassure patients that their care teams are on the same page when managing one’s critical health issues.

Conclusion

Recognizing the importance of patient-centered care is crucial for any professional working in the healthcare industry. PCC not only modernizes the care coordination efforts of professionals but also enhances patients’ perception of care. By prioritizing patient engagement, clinicians can ensure that patients are always heard and valued during their entire care journey.