It might be a bit of a leap to associate quality data with improving the patient experience. But the pathway is apparent when you consider that physicians need data to track patient diagnoses, treatments, progress, and outcomes. The data must be high quality (easily accessible, standardized, comprehensive) so it simplifies, rather than complicates, the physician’s job. This becomes even more important in the pursuit of population health, as care teams need to easily identify at-risk patients in need of preventive or follow-up care. Patients engaged in their own care via portals and personal peripherals contribute to the volume and quality of data and feel empowered in the process. This physician and patient engagement leads to improved care and outcomes, and, ultimately, an improved patient experience.

1. Quality Data is Essential
for Doctors Concerned
with Patient Engagement
— DR. ED CORBETT

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Patient Engagement
Patient engagement is
most effective when driven
by the care team.
While physicians and care
teams can’t force patients
to engage in their own
care, giving physicians the
tools and information they
need to engage patients is
a foundational step in the process.
Data empowers physicians and care teams to engage
their patients increasing the quality of care and
improving outcomes.

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Physicians Use Data to Engage Patients
Physician access to exhaustive,
reliable data is one vital ingredient
for efficiently engaging patients.
The challenge is the lack of a
unified healthcare data source or
true interconnectedness among
multiple healthcare data sources.
From individual EHRs, data ware-
houses, and the universe of data
generated by personalized digital
health devices, we are data rich,
but collection and analysis poor.

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Physicians Use Data to Engage Patients
Most physicians experience the ups
and downs of practicing medicine
with varying amounts of data.
They generally have thorough
information about encounters with
their own patients, but quickly
getting to it wasn’t always simple.
However, patients coming from
other providers usually meant
there was little to no access to
data without making a significant
effort to track it down.

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Physicians Use Data to Engage Patients
Today, when managing large
populations of patients is so
essential to the viability of our
healthcare system, spotty data is
no longer acceptable.
In fact, data aggregated from
across the continuum of care is
the key to enabling doctors and
their care teams to manage
patient populations.

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Physicians Use Data to Engage Patients
Data drives efficiencies by letting
care teams know which patients
are high-risk or in need of
preventive or follow-up care.
With this data in hand, care
teams are prepared to engage
the patients who need it most—
while gaining efficiency in the
practice.
The data ensures the practice is
seeing the right patients and the
physician intervenes where his
expertise is required the most.

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Physicians Use Data to Engage Patients
According to a 2013 RAND study,
80 percent of doctors said they
were dissatisfied with EHRs
because the documentation
demands meant less patient
engagement time.
Clinical environments must
operate as efficiently as possible.
Data-driven efficiencies allows
the physician better clinical
management which improves
care and drives patient and
physician satisfaction.

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The Perils of Bad Data
Few things turn physicians off
data-driven approaches to
managing patient populations
more than bad data.
For example, I once received a
list of patients to contact for a
colonoscopy, and I knew that
many of them had already been
screened.
I didn’t trust the list, so I didn’t
want to work from it.

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The Perils of Bad Data
Unfortunately, bad data exists
because it comes from multiple
sources and is presented in
multiple formats.
Capture inconsistencies results in
both structured and unstructured
data with subjective definitions
depending on who is using it.
And data is complex with multiple
variables and changing regulatory
requirements that call for
changing data sets.

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The Perils of Bad Data
Quality data is absolutely
essential in clinical operations.
If care teams and physicians
don’t have good data, they end
up chasing their tails. They waste
effort and resources on patients
who don’t need their attention.
It’s no secret that high-risk
patients requires much more
attention at the same time
practices operate with limited
resources while seeking to
improve quality.

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Good Data Drives a Culture of Quality
A culture of quality improvement
can motivate physicians to
increase patient engagement.
A physician in a quality culture
does more than see 25 to 30
patients a day and then go home.
Data focuses care and drives
evidence-based decision making,
improving processes and work-
flow. It allows physicians to focus
on the things that matter most—
improving quality and outcomes.

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Patient Engagement Matters to Patients
Achieving the “triple aim” of
healthcare (i.e., improving the
experience of care, improving the
health of populations, and reducing
per capita costs of health care)
depends on patients — with the
guidance of their physicians —
becoming more engaged in
managing their health.

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Patient Engagement Matters to Patients
According to a Harris Poll
conducted in 2012, 85 percent
of patients said it’s either
important or very important to
have the ability to communicate
with their doctor outside of an
appointment, either by phone
or email, to ensure a positive
overall experience.

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Patient Engagement Matters to Patients
A separate Harris Poll conducted
in 2014, showed that nearly half
of Americans are extremely or
very interested in being able to
check their blood pressure (48%)
or their heart and heartbeat for
irregularities (47%) on their
smartphone or tablet.
Forty-three percent of Americans
say they’re extremely or very
interested in mobile apps and
peripherals that can be used to
track physical activity.

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Patient Engagement Matters to Patients
On a personal note, my father was treated for cancer
several years ago. Not generally being tach savy my
parents didn’t use patient portals to communicate with
the care team.
One of the joys of their lives was when the doctor
would actually call them to share the
results of a visit, ask how my
dad was doing, and see if my
parents had any questions.
They would tell me, “The
doctor just called. Wasn’t
that nice?”

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Patient Engagement Matters to Patients
I think about that and my own
experiences reaching out to
contact patients.
That kind of interaction is what
makes the practice of medicine
truly satisfying. But the limiting
factor is time.
By using data to make doctors
more efficient, we open up time
for truly meaningful interactions.

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More about this topic
How Cleveland Clinic Dramatically Improved Patient Satisfaction Scores with Data and
Analytics - Dr. James Merlino, President and CMO, Press Ganey
Improve Patient Satisfaction: 5 Things Healthcare Organizations Can Learn From Disney
Justin Gressel, Senior Data Scientist
How Great Patient Satisfaction Metrics Can Be Achieved in a Regional Medical Center
Greg Stock, CEO Thibodaux Regional Medical Center
6 Proven Strategies for Engaging Physicians—and 4 Ways to Fail
Dr. Bryan Oshiro, Medical Director
7 Tips for Increasing Physician Engagement
Dr. Kevin Croston, Medical Director - North Trauma Institute
North Memorial Medical Center
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Quality Data is Essential for Doctors Concerned with Patient Engagement

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For more information:

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Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Edward Corbett, M.D. joined Health Catalyst in June 2014 as a medical officer. He
earned his medical degree at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San
Antonio where he also completed his residency in Internal Medicine. He is board certified
in Internal Medicine. He started his career as a physician at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas,
Texas specializing in preventive medicine.
Prior to joining Health Catalyst he was a physician partner at Central Utah Clinic, a large multispecialty
clinic which was the first Medicare ACO in the state of Utah. He has a special interest in improving
patient care through the better use of technology and has been actively involved in clinical IT throughout
his career.