Value-based programs and tools to implement in your practice today.
Quick Wins
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Over 2,000 years ago, Hippocrates, the “father of medicine,” focused on knowing his patients. He stressed that rather than practicing medical paternalism, physicians should be healthcare consultants — partnering with patients to improve their health.Today, a similar patient-centered approach to medical care is intensifying. More physicians are partnering with increasingly engaged patients and patient advocates to foreground value-based care in medicine. Radiologists are among those striving to shift to more quality-focused care, even while facing unique challenges that include rising volumes of imaging studies, increasing complexity of images, and ever-expanding regulatory issues.
One way radiology groups have begun advancing patient-focused care is by establishing formal consultation clinics, where radiologists and patients review images together. This engagement empowers patients, and radiologists tend to enjoy it, too. Indeed, speaking with patients is shown to decrease physician burnout — a focus of the ACR’s new Radiologist Well-Being Program.
While patient consultation clinics are a terrific way to provide added value, they’re just one of many ways radiologists can deliver higher-quality, patient-centered care. Doing so doesn’t take grandiose efforts. In fact, groups across the nation are improving care through straightforward initiatives that require few resources and that can be implemented almost immediately. Some of these initiatives are highlighted in this issue of Imaging 3.0 in Practice.
The case studies herein examine strategies that allow radiologists to easily provide value-added care, as MACRA requires, while still meeting the demands of a busy practice setting. From simply greeting patients awaiting imaging exams to including their contact information at the bottom of their reports, radiologists are making great strides in partnering with patients in their care.
Providing compassionate care in this way is something that all radiologists can and should do. The quick wins outlined here can help anyone get started today to improve patient well-being — with the added benefit of making us, as radiologists, healthier, too. We owe it to our patients and to ourselves to take action.
Ian Weissman, DO, FACR
Chair, Patient- and Family-Centered Outreach Committee