Patient Engagement News and Articles

Which Social Determinants of Health Lead to Low Care Quality?

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The different social determinants of health have different impacts on healthcare quality, utilization, and outcomes, with new Humana data showing that some SDOH are more closely related to poor care...

Patient Trust in Clinician, Public Health Expert Credibility an Uphill Battle

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The healthcare industry has a big credibility and patient trust problem on its hands, with new data from Edelman showing that 34 percent of people think any average layperson could know just as much as...

SDOH Screening Campaign Offers How-To for Clinical Practice

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The Physicians Foundation has launched the Let’s Take Five campaign, which aims to give doctors resources to start conversations about the social determinants of health and implement SDOH...

athenahealth to Measure How Consumers Use Patient Engagement Tools

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athenahealth has unveiled the Patient Digital Engagement Index, a new tool that will help healthcare providers measure how consumers use patient engagement tools to manage their care. The EHR vendor...

HHS Unveils Plan for COVID-19 Vaccine Access for Uninsured After PHE End

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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released its plan to maintain COVID-19 vaccine access for the uninsured even after the end of the public health emergency (PHE) in May. The HHS...

ChatGPT AI Chatbot Proves Effective for Patient Queries, Health Literacy

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ChatGPT is an effective solution for online medical search for patients, with the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot accurately answering patient queries around 88 percent of the time, according to a...

YouTube Changes Medical Information Guidelines for Eating Disorder Content

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YouTube is retooling how it presents medical information on social media by outlining new content policies for videos about eating disorders, the company’s director and head of YouTube Health...

Diverse Medical Workforce Improves Outcomes, But Diversity Is Still Rare

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Having more Black primary care physicians in a given area is linked with better survival-related outcomes for the Black people who live there, according to new JAMA Network Open data. These findings...

Low Health Literacy Prevents Cancer Screening for Many Hispanic Patients

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A new study out of the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University presents a snapshot of cancer health literacy, revealing mixed knowledge of cancer adherence screening guidelines that...

CMS Nursing Home Care Compare Exposed for Underreported Quality Info

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A new HHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report is putting CMS on blast for not accurately reporting on nursing home issues on the agency’s Care Compare sites, which healthcare consumers...

Community Support Counters Racism Affecting Maternal Health Experience

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Involving community support persons in the birthing experience can counter obstetric racism impacting the maternal health experience for Black mothers. This approach contributes to safer hospital...

Rethinking Alcohol Use Disorder Preventive Screening via Virtual Care

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New data is showing that preventive screening for alcohol use dropped during COVID-19 surges, despite figures showing that alcohol use increased during the pandemic, prompting some experts to...

Healthcare Costs, Patient Care Access Challenges Folks with Long COVID

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The one in five adults who have experienced long COVID also have trouble with other aspects of healthcare, with new Urban Institute findings indicating issues with healthcare costs and patient care...

Redlining Linked to Experience with SDOH, Higher Stroke Prevalence

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Social determinants of health like educational attainment, poverty, language barriers, and provider workforce shortages are linked to the impact redlining has on clinical outcomes, underscoring how...

Immigration, Birth Status Predicts Limited Patient Health Literacy

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Limited patient health literacy is 81 percent more common in racial and ethnic minority patients who are also immigrants, according to new UC Irvine data, shedding new light on how health literacy can...

NYU Langone Tackles Implicit Bias in Clinical Algorithms for Health Equity

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NYU Langone is taking the next step towards realizing health equity by refining clinical algorithms to remove race-based adjustments and focusing on social determinants of health instead. This comes...

Mixed Contraceptive Access Exposes Regional Reproductive Health Disparities

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Varied contraceptive access in the United States, driven by divergent state-level Medicaid coverage, has resulted in significant reproductive health disparities, according to a recent study by Oregon...

Are Patients Receptive to an Annual COVID-19 Booster Shot, Vaccine?

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Half of adults say they’d get an annual COVID-19 booster shot, not unlike getting their annual flu shot, according to the latest data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). But still, less...

Barriers to Patient-Reported Outcomes Measures for Gender-Affirming Care

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Gender-affirming care offers a great use case for implementing patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs), but PROMs for gender-affirming care need a bit of a tune-up before that can fully happen, per...

Three-Quarters of Docs Lament Medical Misinformation Problem

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The medical misinformation problem isn’t going away, with around three-quarters of physicians saying inaccurate medical information has made it harder to treat patients and has impacted patient...