Posted by ImproveCareNow™ on April 03, 2013
Imagine being a patient who arrives at the clinic and can really sense that the providers are ready to meet your needs!
Imagine knowing that your whole care team sat down a week in advance to review your disease course over the last six months, track down any missing lab results, and troubleshoot with colleagues to figure out why it’s been so tough to keep your disease in remission. Imagine getting a call from the nurse a full week before clinic to ask what has been going on since your last visit and, as a result, the social worker is in clinic and ready to discuss solutions to the issues you are having at school. Imagine the lab having your orders well in advance so that the collection tube that they have to use, but don’t keep stocked, is ready and waiting. This time you don’t have to wait while they run down to the supply room, making you late for school and your parents late for work.
The automated pre-visit planning tools that ImproveCareNow centers are now able to use will help make scenarios just like these a reality. Providers will have detailed summary information about their patients available at their fingertips when they need it...before the visit. They will have a concise, printable tool that can be easily shared with the rest of the care team. Ideally, this tool will be used to guide conversations with parents and patients before they come to clinic so that they can be a part of planning their visit, not just passive participants in it.
The result will be more reliable, proactive and individualized pediatric IBD care.
[editor's note: submitted by Sarah Myers, MPH, RN | Lead Quality Improvement Consultant for the ImproveCareNow Network]