When Eastern Maine Health System set up its pioneer accountable care organization, it made everyone who touched the patient a caregiver to improve care coordination from the administrative staff who schedule appointments to the medical assistant who takes patients’ blood pressure. “Everyone has an opportunity at that point to engage with the patient to find out at that moment in time what they need to make a difference in their life,” said Laine Abbott, senior communications and outreach coordinator, for EMHS Population Health Management.
That was just one example of the approaches ACOs are taking to make patients more central in their care, as part of a panel discussion about patient engagement in an ACO world. Creating patient portals to stimulate more interaction with patients was another big conversation point. Colin Ward, executive director for the Greater Baltimore Health Alliance talked about how patient portals, set up to improve medical education has spurred patients to call their providers to talk about their health.
Among the other participants in the panel at the ENGAGE conference in Washington, D.C. this week were Libby Webb, Director, Product Management, athenahealth; and Gregg Masters, co-founder and managing director, Health Innovation Broadcast Consortium (@2healthguru) who served as the moderator.
