Creating Health Care Consumers

Those in the consumer messaging group complete a health risk assessment. Employees who are considered high risk are contacted by navigators—registered nurses or dieticians trained in a motivational interviewing technique in which they actively listen to the patients and reflect back what they heard. “One thing we’re trying to support is goals they’re ready to be working on, and to teach them how to make the best use of the health care system—getting the highest quality for the lowest cost,” says Paul Terry, president of Park Nicollet Institute, which conducts research and education to “improve quality and public and private decision-making in health and health care,” according to its Web site. “We think they’re going to be value-based shoppers,” Terry says.

The study’s investigators ultimately hope to find the most cost-effective strategies for   helping consumers learn about health care at work. The researchers also want to discover how education can affect patients’ views of health care resources and costs.

“Especially now with new kinds of payment models—for example, HSAs becoming more available—people have to make more choices on spending personal dollars on health care,” Harvey says. “We feel that consumers need to have education around what this whole health care system is about. Ultimately, will that help them to be healthier and spend their dollars more wisely?”

Owning Your Records

For Bloomington-based HealthPartners, patient education begins at the exam-room level. HealthPartners Clinics has been working for 10 years to implement a system of electronic medical records—not unlike a lot of its peers. The antiquated paper system can create treatment delays. But even more worrying, studies suggest that health care providers with paper systems could be treating their patients with old or incorrect data. An electronic system would allow information to be updated quickly and ease the administrative burden of paper charts. But HealthPartners took the electronic records one step further to change the patient experience.

HealthPartners has created what it calls a “prepared practice team,” comprised of a physician, nurse, and support person. Before a patient arrives, the team does pre-visit planning and may suggest that patients get certain tests completed before their appointment. The team openly shares the medical record with the patient, and reviews test results, medications, and medical history together with him or her.

But what happens when the patient leaves the clinic? Studies have shown that patients only remember 20 percent of recommended follow-up care or medication after their visit, says Kevin Palattao, vice president of patient care systems at HealthPartners Clinics. As a result, HealthPartners created MyChart, an online portal in which patients have access to their entire health record. The electronic records reflects what patients see in the exam room with their doctors, but communicated in a way that is geared to lay people.