NeHC patient engagement framework takes incremental approach

The National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) has unveiled its patient engagement framework, a model to help guide health organizations through the process of developing and refining health IT-enabled patient engagement strategies.

The NeHC framework was developed with more than 150 collaborators representing various stakeholders over several months and accounts for healthcare organizations’ capabilities by aligning five phases of patient engagement with the stages of Meaningful Use. The five phases include inform, engage, empower, partner and support.

Healthcare has long been resistant to involving patients. Jeff Donnell, president of the Fort Wayne, Ind.-based personal health record vendor NoMoreClipboard.com, said during the Nov. 19 webinar hosted by NeHC that a healthcare executive told him just weeks ago that patient information should not be as liquid as some would like it. Despite that particular executive’s opinion, Meaningful Use and other policy initiatives are going to require it. “Patients are increasingly engaged and they are using health IT tools,” Donnell said. “The time has arrived for widespread patient engagement.”

Many providers still cling to the belief that patients don’t want to be engaged in their care or that they don’t possess the knowledge to be fully engaged. This is a mistake, according to Eva Powell, MSW, director of health IT programs for the National Partnership for Women & Families, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. “One of the first rules of thumb in terms of getting patients to engage is to understand that assumptions are dangerous.”

Healthcare trends toward patient engagement have inspired some to want to move quickly, but that could be to their detriment, according to Donnell. “Suddenly, people want to go 0 to 60 in a matter of seconds... but we’re not being asked to do all of this at once. There is a journey that can be taken in reasonable and doable steps."

The patient engagement framework walks organizations through simple tasks, such as developing health encyclopedias and other educational materials, to intermediate tasks, such as the integration of patient-generated data, to complex tasks, such as involving patients in the redesign of healthcare delivery models.

“This is all part of a crawl-to-walk approach,” Powell said.

The complete patient engagement framework is available on the NeHC website.