Three Strategies to Deliver Patient-Centered Care in the Next Normal

In the COVID-19 era, decision makers face a variety of new priorities, including scaling virtual care solutions overnight, recovering billions of dollars in lost revenue, overcoming overcrowded ICUs, and managing personnel safety with insufficient personal protective equipment. With so many pressing issues vying for leadership’s attention, patient-centered care can seem like a low-level priority. However, treating a complex virus like COVID-19 underscores the necessity to keep patients at the center of care delivery.

Patient-centered care—personalized medicine that includes the patient as part of the care team and tailors care to unique needs, values, and preferences—can be challenging in healthcare’s new normal. The pandemic has made delivering patient-centered care even more difficult with halted routine care and a change from traditional in-person visits to virtual. However, patient-centered care has never been more critical; it requires providers and care teams to adapt care plans and interventions to the pandemic’s impact on individual patients, especially those at higher risk due to age orchronic diseases.

Three Strategies to Deliver Patient-Centered Care

In spite of what has felt like overnight changes to healthcare delivery with the onset of COVID-19, hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare organizations can focus patient-centered care by applying three strategies:

#1: Improve the Patient Experience

Health systems recognize the increasing importance of patient satisfaction as patients become more involved in their care. Health systems and other healthcare organizations use病人满意度评分作为病人体验和护理质量的指标。虽然患者体验对CMS报销很重要，但它对以患者为中心的护理也很关键，因为满意度的水平揭示了患者对护理的期望，卫生系统满足这些期望的程度，以及患者对护理的参与度。

Understanding patient satisfaction scores (typically survey-based) provides visibility into the healthcare experience from the patient’s viewpoint, including the communication between the care team, effectiveness of care interventions, and how the provider treated the patient. This information helps health systems target and improve areas in which patients feel less satisfied with their care, resulting in elevated patient-centered care and higher patient satisfaction scores that, in turn, increasereimbursements.

#2: Implement the Meaningful Measures Initiative

To ensure that patients remain at the center of care throughout the shift to value-based care from fee for service, CMS enacted clinical quality measures. The CMSMeaningful Measures Initiative(andMeaningful Measures 2.0aimed at focusing the entire healthcare ecosystem around patients even more) serves as a barometer for improving care delivery and prioritizing patients throughout the entire care process. The CMS Meaningful Measures framework puts patients at the center of CMS strategic goals (a requirement for all health systems to qualify for reimbursement) and identifies high-priority, high-impact areas forimprovement.

The Meaningful Measures Initiative further keeps patients at the center of care by decreasing the reporting burden on providers. By streamlining the approach to regulatory reporting and eliminating duplicate measures, providers spend less time in the EHR and more time with patients. Patientdata, combined with analytics tools, also play a role in easing the reporting burden so that providers can focus on patient needs. With effective data mechanisms, care teams can more easily identify gaps in care and track trends instead of manuallysifting through datato find variations in care delivery or patient outcomes. This data not only keeps patients at the center of care, but it allows providers to better understand their performance around the Meaningful Measures Initiative aimed at prioritizing patients in every aspect of care delivery.

#3: Transition In-Person Visits to Virtual

Patient-centered care means taking care to patients, even if it meansvirtual care delivery. Health systems can leverage technology to ensure patient access, even when hospitals close all non-essential surgeries and regular checkups. Virtual care solutions are a win-win for health systems and patients; patients can access care from anywhere and health systems can still monitor patients—especially those vulnerable to COVID-19 due to age or comorbidities.

With the right tools, health systems can scale virtual solutions in such a small window to meet patients where they are, a critical aspect of patient-centered care. TheFinancial Impact Recovery ToolandPatient Stratification Tool, for example, enable healthcare organizations to overcome obstacles to delivering telehealth (e.g., infrastructure, licensing, and provider buy-in), a practical solution when routine care—a principle of patient-centered care—is on hold.

Patient-Centered Care Is Possible in Any Setting

Health systems can deliver patient-centered care in any landscape—from a pandemic tovalue-based care-有效的以病人为中心的策略。在大流行期间，提供以病人为中心的护理是至关重要的，因为常规医疗保健看起来与以往任何时候都不同，没有人知道下一个正常情况会是什么样子。确定以患者为中心的策略——提高患者满意度、满足CMS措施和提供虚拟医疗保健系统——可以避免完全被竞争的优先事项所占据，并使患者成为护理的中心。主动为患者安排优先次序，使卫生系统能够及时解决卫生问题，确保每一位患者达到并保持最佳健康状态。

Additional Reading

Would you like to learn more about this topic? Here are some articles we suggest:

1. Three Analytics Strategies to Drive Patient-Centered Care
2. Shifting to Virtual Care in the COVID-19 Era: Analytics for Financial Success and an Optimized Patient Experience
3. Effective Patient Stratification: Four Solutions to Common Hurdles
4. Six Ways Health Systems Use Analytics to Improve Patient Safety
5. How to Scale Telehealth Solutions to Increase Patient Access During COVID-19

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