Best Practices

Top patient engagement strategies for hospital discharge

March 20, 2024 - Strong patient engagement during hospital discharge is a non-negotiable for most healthcare organizations. As hospitals continue to embrace value-based care models, which issue reimbursement based on a set of clinical quality measures, they seek to reduce metrics like hospital readmissions and post-discharge complications. But getting there relies on patients being able to stick to...


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Patient Engagement Strategies for Improving Patient Activation

by Sara Heath

Clinical care is only one step along the path to helping a patient achieve her optimal state of health. While cutting-edge procedures and innovative therapeutics play a critical role in treating or managing diseases, they typically...

Top Strategies for Improving Medication Adherence Rates

by Sara Heath

Treating an acute or chronic illness doesn’t end with prescribing a drug or a treatment. Rather, achieving ideal clinical outcomes requires patients to actually take the prescription and strong medication adherence. Medication...

Considerations for Social Determinants of Health Screening Design

by Sara Heath

Increasingly, healthcare organizations are starting to design social determinants of health screening processes. Coming as a response to value-based care trends, social determinants of health screenings help clinicians and organization...

Digital Health Literacy: Why It’s Important and How to Improve It

by Sara Heath

More healthcare providers are leaning on patient engagement technologies to support self-management and better outcomes. But as the industry becomes more high-tech, digital health literacy becomes a greater threat to health...

Top Effective Social Determinants of Health Interventions

by Sara Heath

The types of social determinants of health that medical providers may identify in their patients vary, meaning it will take numerous social determinants of health interventions to support patient wellness. But with these hospital- or...

Considerations for Recruiting, Hiring Community Health Workers

by Sara Heath

As team-based care becomes more common in medical practice, healthcare organizations are considering how they invest in non-clinician personnel, like recruiting and hiring community health workers. A community health worker is “a...

Top Considerations for Pediatric Patient Engagement Strategies

by Sara Heath

Pediatric patients aren’t just “small adults.” Clinicians know that concept when making diagnostic decisions, and need to keep it top-of-mind when deploying pediatric patient...

What Does Patient-Centered Care Truly Mean?

by Sara Heath

Patient-centered care may be the healthcare buzzword of the past decade, with industry leaders spouting off the phrase as a panacea for all of medicine’s biggest challenges. It’s a natural...

Patient Communication Strategies for Chronic Disease Prevention

by Sara Heath

Chronic disease prevention is a critical aspect of patient care at all risk levels, but becomes particularly important when a patient moves into rising risk. When that happens, clinicians need to...

4 Patient Engagement Strategies to Close Patient Care Gaps

by Sara Heath

Regular preventive care and screenings, along with strong care management plans, are essential to a good population health strategy. But as healthcare experts observe wide patient care gaps, they need...

3 Key Best Practices for Public Health Communication, Education

by Sara Heath

When an emergency strikes, like a global pandemic or a devastating natural disaster, mass education and direction becomes crucial. Federal, state, and local leadership lean on public health...

How Do Social Determinants of Health Affect Patient Wellness?

by Sara Heath

The social determinants of health garnered a lot of attention once it became evident they can impact value-based care success. As healthcare providers worked to promote overall health and wellness and...

4 Main Barriers Diminishing Patient Activation Efforts

by Sara Heath

As the medical field pushes value-based care efforts, the concept of patient activation has become more critical. After all, it’s an activated patient who is able to fend off or manage illness in...

4 Pitfalls to Avoid in Nurse Communication

by Sara Heath

Strong nurse communication skills is arguably one of the most important factors leading to a good patient experience. After all, nurses spend more time with patients than many other clinicians, and the...

Communication Tips for a Good Telehealth Patient Experience

by Sara Heath

The healthcare industry is quickly tipping to more digital formats, with telehealth care access becoming all the more common for patients with low-acuity health needs. But as more patients and...

Best Practices for Patient-Centered Appointment Agenda-Setting

by Sara Heath

A new study from the Mayo Clinic showed that doctors only spend about 11 seconds listening to a patient during appointment agenda-setting before interrupting the patient with their own viewpoint. These...

Solutions for Reducing Healthcare Appointment Wait Times for Patients

by Sara Heath

Long appointment wait times are an age-old problem in healthcare. While some patients find themselves waiting extraordinary times in the office waiting room, others are waiting days, weeks, or even...

Top Tips for Successful Patient Portal Secure Messaging

by Sara Heath

Secure messaging via the patient portal has presented a new frontier for patient-provider communication. What was previously discussed via telephone calls or during in-person follow-up appointments can...

How to Create, Conduct Community Health Needs Assessments

by Sara Heath

Healthcare organizations working toward addressing the social determinants of health are using community health needs assessments (CHNAs) to determine the best path forward. From uncovering community...