Empowering Patients to Make Healthy Changes Virtually

“Most clinicians have a really hard time talking to patients about healthy behavior change. We either beg or threaten them to make changes. This doesn’t work very well,” says Thomas Bodenheimer, M.D., MPH, a professor in the department of family and community medicine and founding director of the Center for Excellence in Primary Care at the University of California, San Francisco.

Instead of telling patients what to do, which doesn’t work well, health coaching engages patients in decisions about their health and supports them in making changes to live healthier lives. Health coaching helps these patients understand their chronic disease(s) and actively participate in their care. It can be done using telemedicine (video or telephone) or in person.