Although the New York Times took a pass on my letter in response to a Jane Brody column January 30 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/health/30brody.html?ex=1170910800&en=c1237335b6037a06&ei=5070), I thought others might be interested…

To complement the expert suggestions in “The Importance of Knowing What the Doctor Is Talking About” (January 30, 2007), keep in mind that most people are “patients” in the traditional clinical environment far less than 1% of any year’s 8,760 hours.

Therefore, we should maximize the value of that in-person clinical encounter with information targeted to the individual’s moment in care and tailored to their individual needs.

More specifically, a “visit prep” information prescription preceding every encounter will better prepare both patient and clinician for their 15 minutes (give or take) together. Also, research that tells us that patients forget 50% to 80% of everything a doctor says by the time they get home, so an after-visit summary reinforces key issues they discussed.

Implementing these two strategies brings us closer to the Institute of Medicine’s first recommendation from its landmark “Crossing the Quality Chasm” report for care based on “continuous healing relationships.”

–Josh

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Patient-Clinician Relationship, The Media and Information Therapy (Ix), The New Health Care Consumer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.