Dr James Hamrick Offers Advice for Providers Looking to Implement Patient Engagement Programs

The biggest advice I would give to practices and care teams trying to really engage patients more is be innovative, explained James Hamrick, MD, senior medical director at Flatiron Health.

Transcript

What advice would you give a provider looking to implement patient engagement programs into practice?

The biggest advice I would give to practices and care teams trying to really engage patients more is be innovative. Don’t be afraid; if you have good ideas or you see feedback from patients that you think could make sense in your practice, then be willing to innovate. Now, you have to gather support form stakeholders. There’s invariably going to be people that may say, “Here’s why this idea won’t work,” or “We would love to do that but we don’t have the resources,” but continue to push and then track your results. It’s really important when you invest in some sort of new type of patient engagement program at your practice that you understand what does success look like and how are you going to track that?

As soon as I say that, I will say the other key thing is the old saying, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Don’t expect to transform everything and have wonderful, beautiful measures right after you start a project. The first things are probably going to be very simple measures like “Does the team actually participate and buy in?” or “How many patients actually were touched by this new workflow?” So, don’t be discouraged if it’s hard to show the return on investment early, because often the best programs take a while to get started and get buy in and make that culture change that’s going to make it work.