Help your patients navigate the health care system

Unannounced standardized patients: a promising method of assessing patient-centered care in your health care system

BACKGROUND While unannounced standardized patients (USPs) have been used to assess physicians' clinical skills in the ambulatory setting, they can also provide valuable information on patients' experience of the health care setting beyond the physician encounter. This paper explores the use of USPs as a methodology for evaluating patient-centered care in the health care system. METHODS USPs w...

How to successfully navigate your EHR implementation.

Some electronic health record (EHR) implementations proceed on schedule with full involvement of their participants and achieve their goals. Others flounder, stall or struggle, experiencing only partial success or, in extreme cases, no success at all. What accounts for the difference? Is it a problem with the people, the process or the EHR product? How are large-practice implementations differe...

Helping your patients to help themselves.

How patients navigate the diagnostic ecosystem in a fragmented health system: a qualitative study from India

BACKGROUND Depending on a country's diagnostic infrastructure, patients and providers play different roles in ensuring that correct and timely diagnosis is made. However, little is known about the work done by patients in accessing diagnostic services and completing the 'test and treat' loop. OBJECTIVE To address this knowledge gap, we traced the diagnostic journeys of patients with tuberculo...

Insulin Use in Hospitalized Patients With Diabetes: Navigate With Care