Transcript Slide 1

The future patient meets the
future physician
Marlene Winfield
Patient advocate
Trust me more
• The NHS has spent 63 years
removing the burden of care
from my shoulders rather than
enabling me to care for myself.
• Even if I have the most complex conditions, I look
after myself 99% of time and yet I am starved of
information and tools to do it effectively.
• Reward me for caring enough about my health to
research it.
....patients are increasingly seen as active
partners in their health and healthcare.
Engagement is a social change but it is also
a necessary change if disease and disability
are to be prevented and if costs are to be
contained.
Future Physician, Royal College of Physicians,
2010, Appendix C, p. 62
Encourage me to access and use my
health records to manage my health
• Try not to think of them as YOUR records, but
as records you hold jointly with me.
• If I’m not able to understand the records,
meet me half way.
We anticipate that electronic patient
records will play a key role in modern
healthcare. We believe doctors should
actively support patients in evaluating such
records, encourage their adoption, and
endorse the patient’s right to hold their
own records if they wish.
Future Physician, chapter 4, para 4.19
However....
Future Physician is less clear on
changes needed to make jointly held
records usable by the patient partner.
What can change
should change.
I challenge the RCP to make patient
usability a high priority in future
work on record standards!
Encourage me to use IT and information
to take control of my health
• The information revolution will only happen if
you encourage me to join it.
• In some cases, an information prescription is at
least as important as a medical prescription.
• Everyone else has figured out how
to use my cheap labour to defuse
the demographic time bomb –
banks, supermarkets, airlines.
People have a heightened interest in
taking a more active role in their
healthcare. Encouraging this interest,
using fresh ideas and new technologies,
can help to promote safety, efficacy,
efficiency and better healthcare
utilisation by citizens.
Future Physician, appendix C, p. 64
Trust each other more and work
together better
• It is disconcerting to see that primary and
secondary care don’t trust each other more.
• Put the convenience of the
patient higher up the agenda
and join things up for me.
No doctor can any longer regard
themselves as a sole provider of care
to the individual patient.
Future Physician, chapter 5, para 5.7
Be healthily sceptical of shared health
records, but use them
• Shared records are a starting point for the
conversation with me, not a replacement.
• If all who share a record do
their bit to ensure its quality,
and follow RCP guidelines, the
record will be safe to use.
Take care with my data
• 30% of complaints to the
Information Commissioner’s
Office relate to the NHS.
• As your ability to hold and share
my data increases, so must your vigilance.
• It’s not technology that will undo our
relationship, it is carelessness: the memory stick
left on the train, information sent to the wrong
fax, shared smartcards, records left in abandoned
buildings.
Embrace the new
health informatics
• In the future, patients will be
informaticians too.
• This has implications for the structure and
content of records and other health tools.
• It has implications for professional training,
informatics training, and school curricula.
• The computer screen should be the third party
in the consultation, not a barrier.
This is another area where RCP
could take the lead: defining good
practice in the IT-enabled
clinician/patient interaction.
It is another
you!
challenge I set
And finally....
We call on leaders of patient organisations
and on patients themselves to be more
assertive in demanding patient-centred
care....We further call on medical and
political leaders to encourage and support
patients in this assertiveness.
Future Physician, chapter 4, p. 26
A tool to help you
PAREL Patient Friendliness Index
All major plans should be tested against it
• PARTNERSHIP. Does this plan demonstrate
clearly that clinician/patient partnership is now
the expected norm and does it embody that
partnership in visible ways: Nothing about me
without me?
• ACCESS. Does this plan recognise that patients
will increasingly have access to their health
records, and that other electronic tools will be
shared in the future, such as decision aids? Do
proposals reflect that?
• REPRESENTATION. Do your steering groups,
reference groups, etc. have clear and adequate
patient representation? If not, is there an
alternative for adding patient/public input?
• EMPOWERMENT. Does this plan promote
patients taking more responsibility for their
health and more control of their care rather than
just being passive recipients of improved NHS
services (important though that is)?
•
LEADERSHIP. Will this plan help position your
organisation for leadership in the future direction
of informatics and health and social care, as set
out in Liberating the NHS?
Patients and information are the two most under-used
resources in the NHS Dr. Richard Fitton
Cartoon with thanks to the British Medical Journal
A final challenge to you all: do
something about this in my
lifetime!
Thank you