How do you close the gap between patient outcomes and care access?

Barriers are often structural. Important work done by CBOs, the HL7 Gravity Project and others is uncovering the data that shows us which structures to reimagine first.

1. Increasing access to high-quality healthcare: This can be accomplished by improving healthcare infrastructure, increasing access to healthcare financing, and investing in technology. 2. Reducing healthcare disparities: Identifying and addressing healthcare disparities such as income, race, and geographic location are important steps towards improving patient outcomes. 3. Focusing on preventative healthcare: Emphasizing preventative healthcare can help patients avoid more costly and complex treatments. 4. Providing coordinated care: A coordinated and collaborative approach to care can help patients receive timely and appropriate care, which can lead to better outcomes.

In my experience, doing in-person interviews and performing live observations from the perspective of patients and families yields excellent insights. The data is further enhanced by mapping and understanding the context. Then, the utilization of a prioritization process to determine where to start.

Closing the gap between patient outcomes and care access in a hospital setting requires a strategic approach that focuses on both marketing and branding efforts. Here's how you can work as a marketing and branding strategist to address this challenge: 1) Understand the specific areas where the gap exists. Is it due to lack of awareness, geographical constraints, scheduling difficulties, or something else? 2) Build relationships with local primary care physicians and clinics. 3) Promote telemedicine services to increase access for patients who might face transportation or mobility challenges. 4)Develop a strong brand positioning that reflects the hospital's commitment, delivering quality care and positive patient outcomes.

Barriers are often due to lack of representation. A major barrier within healthcare right now is multicultural diversification within staff members & patient representation. Many cultures have different responses to pain, & as a patient myself I often withheld my pain and very rarely mentioned anything to doctors. This caused a near fatal outcome within my heart condition that was nearly misdiagnosed. Women and heart conditions especially within the south asian community is often misrepresented and misdiagnosed so barriers within this space need to be addressed.

5) Build relationships with local primary care physicians and clinics. Collaborate to ensure a seamless referral process, where patients can be easily referred to your hospital for specialized care. 6) Collaborate with local organizations, such as non-profits, schools, and businesses, to create joint initiatives that promote health and well-being in the community. 7)Set clear metrics to measure the success of your efforts. Track patient engagement, appointment bookings, patient satisfaction scores, and referral rates to gauge the impact of your strategy. 8) Organize health fairs, workshops, and community events to educate people about available medical services. 9) Showcase real patient success stories through written testimonials, etc.

Engagement with the humans for whose outcome you desire to better is 💯 key to implementat of evidence based medicine and patient centered care!

As a nurse, you are able to ask patients about their pain, about their quality of stay within the nursing department, but nurses already have an expanded scope. So volunteers can step in with patient satisfaction surveys, but rather more regularly visit patients and have mandated conversational hours to help improve patient quality of stay, and help break barriers of trust so that patients from other countries can feel empowered enough to finally speak up about their quality of life. This will help break the barrier of lack of representation within the healthcare space.

Effective collaboration can involve shared care plans, joint access to patient health data, and regular inter-provider communication, which can help anticipate complications, reduce redundant tests, and avoid conflicting treatments. Additionally, when providers share insights and expertise, it leads to more accurate diagnoses, personalized care pathways, and, ultimately, better patient health outcomes.

The C suite has to drop the 'us and them' mentality with physicians. Whilst hospital administrators goals are mostly fiscal and physicians mostly alturistic, common ground can be found where both win. Early consulation, collaboration, profit sharing etc etc are all ways to improve this collaboration.

As a provider, nurse, OT, PT, the interdisciplinary team can have once a month meetings and add volunteers in these meetings to input patient satisfaction. Having a person input their ideas that represents a culture that is mostly prevalent in the healthcare community in that particular hospital is also beneficial.

Alignment of incentives was the first thought that came to mind when I saw this query. Incentives to improve performance must be set at the organizational level, among providers, including non-physicians, and consumers of care. As value-based care becomes more pervasive in health care, advocacy efforts must focus on ensuring that all participants in the "value chain" have the same incentive to achieve superior outcomes. The current system fails in that regard, but everyone in the care chain (that's everyone) needs to ensure that the motivation for providing and receiving care are in synchrony. Although that task often falls to leaders, all providers, suppliers, and care consumers must be engaged to ensure success.

Having Interdisciplinary team meetings, having more patient advocacy groups, having multicultural and diverse healthcare management individuals/staff can greatly improve access for care. There should always be a patient advocate as well.

Evaluating outcomes benefit everyone - the company, the patients, and the field. By establishing data points to monitor before, during, and after treatment, we are able to measure patient progress, identify areas for internal improvement, promote transparency for patients, and inform the field of necessity of care. After data points are established, ensuring sufficient data collection and completing effective data analysis are all it takes to get your outcome evaluation off the ground! It's absolutely worth it and very necessary to adequately advocate for patients.

Few efforts are as important as health care in improving the human condition. It's sad that measurement systems for health services are used primarily for reimbursement purposes, with care improvements perceived as secondary to cash. Aligning incentives is important, but those incentives must include the outcomes of the care provided, and not just the payment received. Functional measures of care provide the best way of ensuring that the quality of care is as crucial as a profit margin. I've taught and practiced quality improvement for 30+ years, and benchmarking high performers is one of the benefits of effective measurement systems to learn better systems of practice. The Baldrige Excellence Program is a good example of this approach.