Beyond Patient Engagement: How to Effectively Partner With Patients to Optimize Care

Patient engagement is a cornerstone of healthcare quality, driving active collaboration and shared decision-making among patients, families, and providers. Now more than ever, patients are becoming informed consumers of healthcare services, leveraging increased access to their digital health records and extensive condition-specific information available online.

Many patient engagement approaches attempt to convey information that changes customer behavior, drives informed decision-making, and helps people achieve their highest potential for good health. However, effective patient engagement remains a challenge for many medical practices.

Engaging patients in their care is key to improving clinical, quality, and financial outcomes. Effective engagement deepens understanding of overall health and wellness and motivates patients to take a greater role in their health and healthcare services. But it also requires that providers shift from a one-size-fits-all way of informing patients to using multiple communication and education mediums and tailoring solutions to specific service lines and care encounters.