The demand for healthcare is increasing and changing its focus due to the aging population and the rise of chronic conditions. The extended life expectancy and the expectation of an improved quality of life is putting pressure on healthcare systems, which need to improve their management approaches and their services delivery in order to become better attuned to the evolving demand of their clients. Consequently, health systems are now searching for new and effective ways to make their services more sustainable at the economic level and more responsive to their patients’ needs and expectations.
The concept of patient engagement – borrowed from the marketing conceptualization of consumer engagement – is the assumption that making patients/clients co-producers of their health might enhance their satisfaction with the healthcare system, as well as their responsibility, by improving positive clinical outcomes and reducing health delivery costs. Precisely, the experience of engagement is a key qualifier of the exchange between the demand (i.e. citizens/patients) and the supply of healthcare services. Understanding the strategic levers that sustain patient engagement is a key priority to innovating healthcare systems and to improve their sustainability.
Scientifically validated by Graffigna and colleagues, 2015, this model features four positions of the patient’s engagement journey (blackout, arousal adhesion, eudaimonic project), characterized by complex patients’ experiential dynamics. In order to support the process of patient engagement, specific action priorities should be enacted.
Introducing the Patient Health Engagement (PHE) Scale. A healthcare management philosophy, framework, tool, and textbook.
About the creator.Guendalina Graffigna received a PhD in Social Psychology at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, Italy, and completed a Post Doc fellowship as visiting professor in Qualitative Methods at the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, University of Alberta. Guen is now an Associate Professor at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, and teaches “Qualitative Methodology”, and Associate Director for the level II Masters Degree in “Qualitative Methods applied to Social and Marketing Research”. She is also a member of the Scientific Committee for the PhD School in Psychology, and editorial manager for the Journal “Micro&MacroMarketing”. Her research and scientific activities are mainly devoted to patient engagement in health and wellbeing, and healthcare organization innovation and digital health. She has spent the last 10 years constructing bridges between scientific/academic knowledge and professional practice, in the particularly sectors of consumer and health research. At present she has developed the Patient Health Engagement (PHE) Scale healthcare management philosophy, framework, textbook and tool. She is also coordinating intra and inter university reflection for contributing to priorities and policies discussions at the European Level on patient health engagement. |
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Consultations to providers for PHE Scale implementation into the healthcare setting are available. Contact us to learn more.
Vector image, Balanced Mind by Tjaša Žurga Žabkar.