Keep Your Hospital Out of the Penalty Box7 Patient-Education Strategies to Extend Your Care Beyond Discharge

Hospitals are facing $227 million in fines for excessive readmissions.*

Is your hospital next?

*http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/medicare-slaps-two-thirds-us-hospitals-readmission-penalties/2013-08-05 2

Studies show that patient education significantly reduces readmissions.*

Patients need information about:

+ Medicines.+ Self-care. + When to call the doctor.

3*http://www.rwjf.org/en/about-rwjf/newsroom/newsroom-content/2013/02/heart-failure-education-reduces-readmissions.html

The greatest untapped resource in health care is the patient.

What patients do for themselves after they leave the hospital has much or more impact as the care provider on readmissions, outcomes, and the quality of care.

While discharge education is important, the real “teachable moment” for hospitals is after discharge.

This is the time when the problems and challenges of continuing care at home have become reality for the patient or the caregiver.

Read the seven strategies that can extend the reach of your care beyond discharge to deliver the information patients need.

4

1one

resource

Use a single education resource. Your organization has enough to juggle.

A patient-education vendor that covers all care settings on any platform means less maintenance for you and consistent, connected information for your patients.

5

+ Trusted sources of patient health information are key to effectiveness at discharge. Patients and clinicians must believe the information available is accurate, in their best interest, and without any hint of commercial bias by provider, insurer, or supplier.

+ Breadth of coverage is also key. People need to find value every time they search. If clinicians search for a medical issue without success, they miss an opportunity to give their patients the important information they need.

+ To reinforce trust, consistency of message is also critical. Patients depend on the instructions and information given at discharge to be the same message they received during the hospital stay. All content should be routinely and regularly updated for consistency and accuracy across your enterprise.

6

2Build your discharge program with education that activates and engages. “One reason why patients have adverse events after they leave the hospital is a lack of understanding about their follow-up care.”*

7

* http://www.ahrq.gov/legacy/research/

mar09/0309RA1.htm

+ Discharge instructions should raise patients’ understanding of their conditions, medicines, and stages of recovery to help them take care of themselves at home and to know when to call the doctor.

+ Fewer readmissions will occur when patients are armed with the information that supports them every step of the way as they become more active and engaged in their health.

+ When patient education gives context to a hospital’s medical discharge data, patients get what they need to adhere to their treatment plans.

8

3Go beyond paper with mobile and online educational resources.

“81% of U.S. adults use the internet and 59% say they have looked online for health information in the past year.”*

9*http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Health-online.aspx

+ Giving patients the education they need when they’re on their smartphones, tablets, or home computers cost- effectively increases the reach of your care.

+ A personal and secure online message center can be an important resource for patients—with information that answers their questions, teaches self-care, and reassures them about their stage of recovery.

+ Paper can be tossed or lost. An online message center gives patients 24/7 access to education resources.

10

4Make it part of your workflow.If it’s easy, your clinicians will use it.

11

+ A good patient education system uses patient data—diagnosis, demographic, medicine, and procedure codes—to trigger a short list of suggestions for relevant patient education, all within the clinician’s existing workflow.

+ The patient education system should integrate with your current EMR so that clinicians don’t have to open another application to find and deliver patient education. This makes it easy to give patients the information they need.

+ Clinicians should be able to personalize the content for patients by adding patient-specific notes.

12

5Bridge the communication gap between clinicians and their patients who do not speak English. Every day, more and more people who speak other languages are moving to the United States.

13

+ By providing translated patient education as a part of your health care, you can increase the quality of your care, encourage more appropriate use of health care services for these populations, and reduce readmissions.

+ Non-English–speaking people can communicate better with their care providers and learn more about their own health.

+ Offering discharge instructions in multiple languages supports the latest federal and state requirements for providing health information in common primary languages.

14

Enhance your patient follow-up by having a view into what your patients do with the educational resources. Today it’s easy for clinicians to deliver patient education, but it’s not often that clinicians have a window into patient activity.

615

+ A complete patient education system tracks whether your patients are reading the education and using the tools.

+ Reports of patients’ responses and progress help your clinicians provide informed and more personalized follow-up.

+ A view into each patient’s engagement can quickly identify problems that may lead to a readmission.

16

7Reach your patient engagement goals with a customized strategy built for success. It has to be more than putting health education materials into your EMR.

An ongoing customized strategy helps your organization meet its goals to reduce readmissions.

17

Phases of a successful patient-engagement implementation:

+ Assess the business need, and develop strategies to advance your discharge program goals. - Establish goals, objectives, and success measures. - Define the scope, timeline, key deliverables, and milestones. - Create your change management and communication plan. - Develop implementation and training plans tailored to your organization.

+ Execute the integration, implementation, communication, and training plans. - Communicate the vision and value. - Complete the technical integration. - Launch the solution.

+ Review and verify that the solution supports your discharge program goals. - Assess progress, performance, and utilization. - Evaluate clinician and patient satisfaction and workflow effectiveness. - Recommend and make process and technology adjustments as needed. - Develop processes to measure, evaluate, and make changes.

18

The Bottom Line For patient education to help reduce readmissions: Hospitals need a single system that lets clinicians prescribe and deliver health education interventions during the hospital stay, at discharge, and at home.

And this system should report on patient activity so clinicians can offer informed, tailored follow-up care.

19

A recognized industry leader. Legendary client services. Nonprofit.And dedicated to your success.

Share this eBook with your colleagues.

2601 N. Bogus Basin Rd, Boise, Idaho 83702

1.800.706.9646

www.healthwise.org

© 2013 Healthwise, Incorporated.Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise.