Reducing 30 Day Readmissions

Patient Education

Patients education

Patient education can be described as a process by which majorly health professionals and other related stakeholders impart information to patients together with their caregivers so that there can be improvement of health status and also alter health behavior of patients. Those who may be involved in health education may include physicians, pharmacists, registered nurses, psychologists, special interest groups, and pharmaceutical companies. Health education can also be used as a tool by managed care plans in general preventative education and health promotion. Some of the important elements that are supposed to be considered when dealing with patient education are skill building and responsibility. It is necessary for patients to know why, when and how they are required to make their lifestyle change. This process of patient education is capable of reducing healthcare costs.

Looking at studies pertaining cost containment, it shows that patient education results to a significant savings. Those patients who are educated tend to maintain better health and fewer instances of complications, and this makes them to be in need of fewer occasions of hospitalizations, visits to emergency department, as well as clinic and physician visits. While health care's growth continues to outpace inflation in most of the nations allover the world, health policy makers have majorly turned to concentrate more on cost containment. In managed care, they have majorly shifted their strengths in lowering supply of services.

Educating patients and engaging them in their health management will always lower better the outcome hence lowering costs. The healthcare will have small number of diagnostic testing expenditures in addition to fewer referrals. Patients who have been educated and involved in their health affairs tend to be more adherences to the prescribed medical treatments which as well impacts cost and quality outcomes positively. Educating the patients means that even the family members or caregivers are also to be included in the ongoing education and this always improve functional status and faster recovery.

Impacting patients with knowledge about their health and ways of managing it without having to depend on the help from the hospital or other people makes the patients themselves to feel more involved, empowered, and knowledgeable hence becomes more satisfied. Patients education have positive impact on self-management and behavior change on the part of the patients, which according to researches this have a direct impact on the health outcomes and the costs involved.

In the U.S. two-thirds of the populations are overweight or obese. According to the researches, the rising rates of obesity accounts for a considerable fraction of spending growth in America. These obese individuals have high chances of developing chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. People who have chronic conditions usually account for about 84% of the United State's total cost of health care. A study done by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2012 found that most of the chronic conditions are preventable, and in many occasion accelerated by a personal choice to be involved in unhealthy behaviors. Patients who have been well-informed and impacted with knowledge carry out more health-related behavior changes, like the ones pertaining dietary modification, exercise, and smoking cessation. Information as well as interactive tools support patients education and it plays a very important role in supporting prevention, wellness as well as management of chronic conditions.

Other studies by managed care organizations have generally indicated that patient teaching is cost-effective. Some of the summary of studies showing the cost-effectiveness of particular patient education programs included:

Chronic pain counseling in an outpatient clinic happened to reduce visits to the clinics by 36%. The cost was $101 per patient. The savings were $312 for each patient, resulting to a cost benefit ratio of 1:3:1.

Asthma group education happened to reduce emergency room admissions as well as hospitalizations. The cost for each patient was $37. The savings were $217 for each patient, resulting to a cost benefit ratio of 1:5:8.

Diabetes education within a public health department happened to reduce hospitalizations by 44%. The cost for each patient was $150. The savings were $442 for each patient, resulting to a cost benefit ratio of 1.29.

Prenatal/nutrition counseling as well as smoking cessation happened to reduce pre-term births from 6.9% up to 1.7%. The cost per patient was $93. The savings were $183, resulting to cost benefit ratio of 1:2.

Asthma pediatric education happened to reduce yearly emergency room visits from 7.4 to 1.9 for each child. The cost for each patient was $180. The savings were $687, resulting to a cost benefit ratio of 1:3:8.

(Cost-benefit ratio=cost of education for each patient divided by total saving for each patient.)

There was no studies which showed that costs went higher that savings. Averagely, each and every dollar which was invested in these as well as similar programs, between $3-4 was saved.

At time every citizen has the obligation of making important health decisions that in turn affects the outcomes of healthcare. A strategy by most of our health facilities to support patient education should be among the most important plank of health policy, (Beck R.S., Daughtridge R., and Sloane P.D., 2002). Moreover, it is important to always have in mind that patients too have a significant role in understanding what causes their illness, taking appropriate action and protecting their health as well as managing chronic illness. Such roles should be recognized and supported by the stakeholders involved.

Other nations which have realized a positive outcome regarding their engagement in training patients on the ways of dealing with their health hence reduction in financial demand on their health services, is Denmark. According to study in the country where a hundred consecutive patients who have reached the age of 48 to 89 admitted to a general medical ward with chronic obstruction pulmonary disease (COPD). The were allocated randomly in order to receive standard hospital practice or personalized hospital practice (PHP) which included training the patients bout the various diseases. Each patient per year, for a period of one year after the intervention became evaluated on the changes in consumption of health service in 82(PHP group 42, control 40) those patients who happened to complete their intervention phase. The result was that personalized hospital practice reduces consumption of health services by patients with chronic obstruction pulmonary disease. It was realized that the rise in consumption of health after intervention was on average Kr15,298 for each patient in a year less in the PHP group within the control group (p=0.048). Compared to PHP group, within the control group there was a significant increase in the consumption by general practitioner, (Tougaard L, Krone T, Sorknaes A, Ellegaard H. 1992).

Ways of Improving Self-Management of Chronic Conditions in order to reduce the 30 day re-admission in the hospital

Generally three out of ten Europeans suffer from a long-standing illness or health problem. Many of their countries with their policy makers have now turned to look for ways in which they can apply so that they can shift their resources back to the patients and the community at large as an effort of dealing with chronic conditions more effectively thereby reducing 30 day re-admission in the hospital. More importantly they are search for ways of empowering individuals to manage their own health through providing them self-management knowledge.

Having patients educated on how to manage themselves can improve their understanding and knowledge of their continuous problematic conditions, how to cope with the behavior, how to adhere to treatment recommendations, sense of self-efficacy as well as symptom levels. Some of the ways which can be applied is using computer-based self-management education and support which can assist in increasing a patient's knowledge and self-care ability resulting to better health behavior and better outcome. Educating patients on self-management initiatives tend to work better when it becomes integrated into the health care system, but not organized separately. For the patient education initiatives to be successful, the role of health professionals will be of great importance.

In patient education, they are taught on how to practice self-management, especially to patients with chronic conditions. While practicing self-management they are supposed to recognize, treat, as well as manage their own chronic health problem, following the education received from the medical professionals. Indeed, many of the patients with chronic problems happen to cope with their conditions well, when they use the education they got, without necessarily requiring or calling help from the professional. Even individuals with long-term conditions find themselves spending far more time taking care of themselves more than remaining under care of health professionals. This is a fact that health service planning should always consider as an important factor. Failing to support self-management means that there will be large dependency on professionals which burdens them and even raises the demand for expensive health care resources, which in turn threatens to undermine the long-term sustainability of many.

To great extent self-management is usually made up of day-to-day caring to chronic illnesses like arthritis, diabetes, and asthma. Since from the statistics many are suffering from chronic diseases, making them to manage themselves is part of the priority by United States health systems. The affected people will even prefer to manage themselves on their own without the help of health professionals. Therefore, whenever patients with chronic health problems seek for professional advice, they are supposed to be given appropriate education and support so that they can be able to improve their self-management skills.

On the other hand, sometimes you find that such patients may fail to get this. In some occasions the manner in which patients and clinicians interact seems to only promote passivity as well as dependence, but not the usual self-reliance, hence weakening self-confidence of patients and undermining these patients ability to cope. As a way to cope up and shifting away from dependence on the expensive hospital sector, as well as reducing the 30 days re-admission to the hospital in attempts to deal more efficiently with chronic problems, educating patients with right skills is the right direction.