Five Data-driven Patient
Empowerment Strategies

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Patient Empowerment
Most healthcare outcome improvements are
attributed to clinical, operational, or financial
process changes in the acute care setting.
It’s often skilled clinicians who get the credit
for reducing readmissions, length of stay, or
costs of care—and rightfully so.
But patients, too, can play a considerable role
in improving their own care.
Many patients, especially those with chronic
conditions, want to play this role; they just
need the assets (e.g., tools, information,
environments) to participate.

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Patient Empowerment
Data and digitized health—and instruction on
how to use them—are proven means for
building patient empowerment strategies.
This shifts the balance of care from the
hospital and clinician to the community and
patient, and produces meaningful, patient-
centered outcomes.
If clinicians can understand how data
empowers their patients, and why that’s
important, they can realize greater
efficiencies in clinical processes and achieve
outstanding outcome improvements.

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What Empowering Patients Means
Empowering patients is giving patients control
over healthcare in ways that clinicians may not
typically consider.
Patients want ownership over the things that
matter most to them, such as measuring and
monitoring their own biometrics and having
access to condition-specific information when
and where they want it.
Clinicians can help patients understand the
important role patients have in managing their
own health challenges.

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What Empowering Patients Means
Beyond the time spent with doctors and
nurses, patients with chronic disease spend
5,000 hours a year on other activities
directly affecting health.
They must decide what to eat or drink, or
how certain exercise and activities will
impact their lives.
Patients have to decide what medications to
take and what medical advice to follow.
These decisions take place outside the
clinical setting, yet the typical healthcare
model focuses on optimizing the limited
time patients spend with their doctors.

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What Empowering Patients Means
Empowering patients means giving them
data—and the technology and education to
process it—so they can more effectively
use, or reduce, those 5,000 hours.
Many unique programs exist to demonstrate
the positive impact and time-saving potential
of empowering patients with technology.
The NHS in the United Kingdom is
successfully using a program that gives
patients more control over their daily, at-
home care and optimizes the time they
spend on these activities.

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What Empowering Patients Means
A team at NHS Stoke on Trent (now Stoke Clinical
Commissioning Group) created the program,
Florence (Flo).
Flo is a simple telehealth system that uses mobile
text messages to help people manage their
chronic conditions and other healthcare issues.
Flo sends patients reminders and helpful tips
customized to their needs, whether it’s
managing diabetes, living with COPD,
or learning how to properly breastfeed.
It’s a perfect illustration of using data
and digital health to empower patients
to manage their disease.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
Empowered patients are a potent resource for
generating outcomes improvement. Empowering
them with data and innovative ways to manage
their own care can generate impressive results.
Here are five ways data empowers patients to
become owners of their own healthcare journeys.
1. Data Promotes Patient Engagement
2. Data Produces Patient-Centered Outcomes
3. Data Helps Patients Practice Self-Care
4. Data Improves Communication Between
Clinicians and Patients
5. Data Leads to Faster Healing and
Independence for Patients

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
1: Data Promotes Patient Engagement
Patient engagement has been likened to a
blockbuster drug that, if not used, should
be considered a form of malpractice.
Empowering patients with easily
accessible and actionable data increases
their engagement and results in better
clinical outcomes, greater patient
satisfaction, and lower costs.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
1: Data Promotes Patient Engagement
Kaiser Permanente ran a Collaborative Cardiac
Care Service pilot program that used technology
and data to develop patient engagement through
proactive patient outreach and education.
Patients in the program had an 88 percent
reduced risk of dying of a cardiac-related cause
when enrolled within 90 days of a heart attack,
compared to those not in the program.
Clinical care teams reduced overall mortality by 76
percent and cardiac mortality by 73 percent.
Patients engaged by the coordinated care
program clearly fared better.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
2: Data Produces Patient-Centered Outcomes
Data helps patients achieve the outcomes they
desire and gives them independence rather than
simply having them follow clinical plans.
When clinicians ask patients what matters to them,
rather than what’s the matter with them, a very
different picture can emerge.
What’s important to patients are outcomes
that define their ability to function well, feel well,
and survive longer. Costs often decrease when
clinicians follow patient wishes and focus on
patient-centered outcomes, rather than
following strict clinical protocol.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
2: Data Produces Patient-Centered Outcomes
Data helps patients achieve the outcomes they
desire and gives them independence rather than
simply having them follow clinical plans.
When clinicians ask patients what matters to them,
rather than what’s the matter with them, a very
different picture can emerge.
What’s important to patients are outcomes
that define their ability to function well, feel well,
and survive longer. Costs often decrease when
clinicians follow patient wishes and focus on
patient-centered outcomes, rather than
following strict clinical protocol.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
2: Data Produces Patient-Centered Outcomes
My Life, My Dialysis Choice effectively puts data
and technology into patients’ hands.
It’s a patient-centered app that considers patient
preferences while they make dialysis choices.
The app asks questions about a patient’s lifestyle
and goals while on dialysis, then tailors a program
to match those preferences.
How important is travel? Spending time with
family? Keeping a pet? Avoiding pills? Based
on the answers, the app asks for a star
ranking of different treatment options,
then advises on next steps.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
3: Data Helps Patients Practice Self-Care
Data and technology can help patients
practice self-care.
When patients administer their own care, the
outcome improvements can be remarkable.
Ryhov County Hospital in Jönköping,
Sweden, evolved into a self-dialysis center
because one patient asked about doing the
procedure himself.
He was taught to use the dialysis machine,
interpret lab values, and document his
care. Self-dialysis led to less variation
and fewer complications.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
3: Data Helps Patients Practice Self-Care
The patient and staff educated other
patients and, eventually, a new wing
was dedicated solely to deeply engaged
patients performing self-dialysis.
Today, 60 percent of all dialysis
patients self-administer, and the center
is heading toward a goal of 75 percent.
There are fewer complications, some
patients avoid subsequent care, and
per-patient costs are lower by one-third
to one-half.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
4: Data Improves Communication Between Clinicians and Patients
Patients often misunderstand the language of
healthcare. Care instruction for patients with
chronic and long-term health conditions
requires carefully targeted communication
in terms that patients understand.
Giving patients access to their own data
and control over generating that data
significantly improves how patients
comprehend and complete their care
instructions.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
4: Data Improves Communication Between Clinicians and Patients
Sharon Rising, a midwife at Boston
Medical Center, created a new model for
prenatal care that rethinks data and data-
generating tools.
When a woman learns she is pregnant,
she can join the Centering Pregnancy
program, a group care model that
includes 10 two-hour, group visits with
other moms due in the same month.
Visits are conducted in a conference
room rather than an exam room.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
4: Data Improves Communication Between Clinicians and Patients
Each patient measures and records her
own vital signs, then shares the record
with her physician and midwife, shifting
the balance of care from the clinician to
the patient.
The group dynamic involves sharing,
relationship building, and reassurance
from other moms who are going through
the same life-changing process.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
4: Data Improves Communication Between Clinicians and Patients
This model of care reduced the risk of preterm
birth by 33 percent, reduced racial disparities for
preterm births, and nearly doubled the number of
Centering Pregnancy participants who breastfed
over those in a comparison study.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
5: Data Leads to Faster Healing and Independence for Patients
Data helps clinicians think outside the walls of
the acute care setting to develop new
protocols that directly impact patients and
lead to substantial outcome improvements.
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals in the United
Kingdom needed a better way to discharge
older patients.
It considered discharging these patients to
their homes first, and then assessing their
support needs in the environment where they
live rather than inside the hospital.

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Five Ways Data Builds Patient Empowerment
5: Data Leads to Faster Healing and Independence for Patients
Early in the process, the team was unsure that the
“admit to home” idea would work, but through several
plan-do-study-act cycles, processes improved and a
new program emerged.
It eventually grew to serve 10,000 patients in
one year, who got home three to four days faster,
saving 30,000 to 40,000 acute-care bed days.
Data and a unique patient engagement strategy
generated dramatic cost, process, and patient
experience improvements.

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Use Data to Realign Care Roles, Empower
Patients, and Transform Healthcare
Healthcare needs to adapt to numerous
changes sweeping through the industry.
Patient expectations of healthcare delivery
and outcomes are changing as technology
permeates society and the healthcare
economy.
Healthcare providers can take advantage
of these opportunities and adapt in ways
that shift the conventional thinking of how
healthcare should be delivered.

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Use Data to Realign Care Roles, Empower
Patients, and Transform Healthcare
Patients want to be involved in practicing
their own care, managing their own
conditions, monitoring their own results, and
producing their own outcomes.
Asking what matters to patients, rather than
what’s the matter with them, reduces the
burden on clinical staff and resources,
improves communication between patients
and clinicians, and significantly increases
healthcare’s value.

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Use Data to Realign Care Roles, Empower
Patients, and Transform Healthcare
Clinicians must empower patients
with data and tools that give them
appropriate decision-making power
and control over their own care.
Shifting the balance of care from
clinicians and hospitals to patients
and the community can improve the
patient experience, reduce costs, and
improve processes to make
healthcare more efficient.

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For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

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Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
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Maureen was the former IHI President and CEO for five years, after serving as Executive
Vice President and COO for 15 years. She is a prominent authority on improving health care
systems, whose expertise has been recognized by her elected membership to the National
Academy of Medicine (IOM), among other distinctions.
Ms. Bisognano advises health care leaders around the world, is a frequent speaker at major health
care conferences on quality improvement, and is a tireless advocate for change.
Maureen Bisognano