Be a patient advocate

In last month’s column, I shared with you that my driving passion is patient advocacy and how quality & safety is critically important to the patient’s entire healthcare experience. This month, I’d like to continue that conversation by further highlighting an expanded view of what quality is and the valuable role quality can play in caring for and connecting with patients and families – helping them navigate their healthcare experience and understand the resources available to them.

Too often our worlds collide – and recently, my personal life which includes caring for an aging person, collided with my quality role – and even my sensibilities for quality. The person I care for is a Medicare Advantage (MA) customer. While the benefits of the program are the reason he’s a customer, the downside seems to be a care coordination issue between the MA plan and the primary care physician (PCP) – which at present – is currently on track to create new care transition and communication issues between healthcare stakeholders and the patient – instead of solving for them.

Ambitions in healthcare are driven by needs and motivations to do good; I have no doubt about that. However, too often, we work to comply with requirements around ‘annual wellness visits’ and ‘social determinants of health (SDOH) risk assessment’ and we miss the forest for the trees.

Is this information valuable to have, even if it is procured outside of a routine care setting with the patient’s PCP who has known him for years? And is it helpful to have SDOH risk factors assessed if not integrated into the community in which he lives?

The opportunity for healthcare quality leaders is to connect the dots. We see healthcare from the bird’s eye view and as we survey the situation, we can see, there is a lot of daylight between people and processes, which may serve administrative compliance needs, but very likely does not serve the patient.

It’s time for quality professionals to step into this vacant space and lead. And that leadership can transcend beyond care delivery into supporting the patient navigating the system.

Too often, patients do not understand how to navigate the healthcare system. This is where an advocate can help communicate to patients and their caregivers the resources and options available to them for the situation they may be facing.

Patient advocacy is such an important component of Population Health and Care Transitions, one of the eight domains of the NAHQ Healthcare Quality Competency Framework. Here’s some practical advice I hope you find helpful in your journey towards becoming a better patient advocate:

• Learn more about the critical competencies required to advance population health and care transitions.
• Access topic-relevant education materials, such as our learning lab on The Role of the Healthcare Quality Professional in Population Health Management.
• Evaluate your organization’s patient outreach process and devise a formalized plan to help patients and caregivers navigate and coordinate their care.

Be a quality champion and patient advocate. The Q is all of you!

Patricia (Patty) Resnik, MJ, MBA, RRT, FACHE, CPHQ, CHC, CHPC, CRC 

NAHQ President