Patient Education Center, Bulfinch Medical Group

Immediately as we entered Bulfinch Medical Group (BMG), an outpatient practice affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital (part of Partners Healthcare), we saw a fantastic educational resource center for BMG patients. It was integrated well both physically and functionally to fully support clinician-prescribed Ix. 

As you enter through the door to the practice, the resource center is immediately on the right, staffed by a welcoming and knowledgeable health educator, who can guide users to the right electronic and print materials (I think there were three computer work stations for patients…or, I suppose, family members waiting there during the appointment, wondering about their loved ones’ conditions—a clearly strong information-seeking space). What is particularly notable from multiple perspective—functional, aesthetic, and philosophical—is that it is separated by glass so that it can be a distinct, quiet setting and yet one that is central and visible to every person who enters the practice (you just can’t miss it!). In many clinics that have started down this road, they may have a small kiosk or computer station sitting in the waiting room that doesn’t particularly important or inviting. In larger clinics or community hospitals, they might have a separate resource center or patient library, but it often is not in a place that the average patient would notice.

It appears clear to me that this architecture was philosophically intentional and is fully supported by how the resource center is integrated into the clinical encounter. The office staff put an “Information Rx” prescription pad with a patient information sheet, making it a routine part of every clinical encounter. For example, when the nurse practitioner I shadowed was finishing up an appointment with a Brazilian nanny experiencing back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome, she complemented her oral care plan and next steps with the Ix to be filled in the resource center—noting that the content she had checked off from a list of several dozen options—needed to be provided in Portuguese. The nurse practitioner noted that it might take about a day for the resource center to fill that language-specific information prescription. The patient left the exam room with both her Rx (over-the-counter pain reliever and a muscle relaxant) and her Ix (to understand how to prevent and reduce back pain and physical therapy exercises to do on her own).

Marcy Bergeron, Director of Quality Innovation, described other Ix innovations that BMG has implemented, spearheaded in significant part by Marcy. Perhaps most impressive is how far BMG has advanced its pre-visit prep for annual physicals. The initial BMG initiative was (I think)launched soon after the 2004 Ix conference and was decidedly low-tech. Not wanting to be constrained at the pace of Ix implementation by technology integration limitations, BMG moved forward with a manual pre-visit prep Ix sent via regular US mail. Now, pre-visit Ix can be filled online through BMG’ online tools (http://www.massgeneral.org/bmg/forms.html).

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