For those of us parents with twins, we strive to prevent our homes from being natural laboratories for studying our children. Sometimes, it’s hard to overlook.

When my twins were toddlers, they often — like toddlers in general — were playing in the same space but not playing together. In child development lingo, that’s called “parallel play.”

For toddlers, parallel play is a natural phenomenon and nothing to worry about. However, when that term needs to be deployed to describe the communication between clinicians and patients, it’s time to shout, “Houston, we have a problem!” Parallel play in the clinician-patient relationship represents the antithesis of “participatory medicine.”

Thanks to Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at the Health Populi Blog, I came across new data from Harris Interactive that examined — among other things — whether patients share what they find on the Web with their doctors. When asked in 2007, 42% of consumers responded that they “never” share their online health info with their physicians; by 2009, that percentage rose to 56%. Yikes!

We also know from Pew Internet Project data that consumers’ number-one preferred source of health information is their docs, so we have to presume that this hidden Web information is not a desired situation from patients’ perspectives. Barriers to sharing information probably include some combination of: lack of adequate time; poor systems to facilitate information prescribing and exchange; and fear that doctors will not respond positively to the information consumers bring into the conversation from external sources.

The Internet should be a tool that helps elevate the level of discussion between clinician and patient, and it can be. Clinicians and delivery systems that have developed systems and infrastructure to facilitate information therapy (Ix) ensure that Web health information is built into the care delivery process. That facilitates better continuity of care and lays the groundwork for more holistic approaches to care delivery such as a truly patient-centered medical home.

Sarasohn-Kahn suggests that the recession may be part of the reason for this increase in parallel play, and she may very well be right. But whatever it is, it’s likely to exacerbate an already-fragmented care delivery process and lead to worse care for consumers unless we build more Ix infrastructure into the system.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 9:16 am and is filed under Data, Participatory Medicine, Patient-Centered Medical Home, Patient-Clinician Relationship, Research. 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.