Posted by ImproveCareNow™ on October 21, 2021
ImproveCareNow was highlighted in a September 2021 article by Healthcare Innovation called Pulling Together Around the Patient Experience. In the article, author David Raths uses interviews with key network participants to characterize the ways in which patients and clinicians are working together to co-produce care pathways, outcome measures and clinical trials - and the impact these efforts are having.
The article opens with reflections from Jennie David, an early co-chair of the ImproveCareNow Patient Advisory Council who has since gone on to earn her PhD in clinical psychology and currently works with pediatric patients at Nationwide Children's Hospital, about her early days engaging with the network.
Later on, I was looking through the agenda for the conference and I realized that I was just talking with the people who created and run the network. It was a tremendous culture shock and it felt so different. They really wanted to know what I as a patient would want to have different about my care. And that was tremendously different — that people were paying attention, not just at the conferences, but in between conferences.
Executive Director, Kristin Howe, DC, MHA, and Clinical Director, Shehzad Saeed, MD, FAAP, AGAF, both shared perspectives on how ImproveCareNow's approach to patient engagement - across the Network and in clinical research - is shifting paradigms and setting the example for how we can work together to bring true and meaningful co-production to the healthcare landscape.
"People don't always train in medical school to include patients in a dialogue. Paternalistic ways of providing care have legacy effects. There’s training that happens on both sides and a bit of a calibration as part of the network." - Kristin Howe
"The flattening of the hierarchy and the power equation is the secret sauce, I think." - Shehzad Saeed
The article closes with Jennie David, PhD poignantly stating, "When we think about making things better within healthcare, it just seems logical to be co-producing these changes with the people who are going to be experiencing them."
Read Pulling Together Around the Patient Experience
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About ImproveCareNow
ImproveCareNow is a Learning Health Network dedicated to transforming care, health and costs for all children and youth with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (Inflammatory Bowel Disease or IBD) by building a sustainable collaborative chronic care network. We are enabling patients, families, clinicians and researchers to work together in a learning health care system to accelerate innovation, discovery and the application of new knowledge. We invite everyone interested in getting kids with IBD better right now to join us!
About Healthcare Innovation
Healthcare Innovation delivers a bi-monthly print magazine and digital edition, daily enewsletters, and a comprehensive website. An annual subscription is free to qualified healthcare professionals. Winners of numerous national awards for editorial excellence, the editors of Healthcare Innovation draw upon decades of experience in covering the industry, sharing insights and analysis with readers through feature articles, web interviews, blogs, and news coverage.