"Big picture" healthcare and patient engagement

HealthMaker Philip Hagen, MD, medical director of Mayo Clinic EmbodyHealth, envisions a new relationship between physicians and patients. In this video he talks about redirecting the focus to keep patients healthy in a way that is financially viable.

Transcript

00:00

Instead of being responsible for 2,000 of them, you're going to be responsible for 1,000 of them, or 500 of them.

00:06

But get to know them, and know what their medical needs are, and focus on keeping them healthy. I think the physicians would respond to that a lot.

00:21

We redirect the energies of the physician. So, again, if I could take a primary care physician,

00:28

and say, hey, you know what? The goal, I'm going to take the pressure off of you to see 30 patients in a day, or more that some see.

00:36

What I really want you to do is get to know your patients. You're only, instead of being responsible for 2,000 of them, you're going to be responsible for 1,000 of them,

00:44

or 500 of them. But get to know them, and know what their medical needs are, and focus on keeping them healthy.

00:52

I think the physicians would respond to that a lot. And I think most physicians, especially in primary care, go into primary care because they like working with people.

01:00

So I think we need to move the orientation of the system

01:07

away from the current disease focus, from the current visit focus, from the current test-related

01:13

revenue focus, to the big-picture care focus, and make it financially viable for primary care physicians

01:22

to do that, and to make it to incentivize both the patient and the physician to do that.

01:28

I know that my patients who do the best health-wise, actually, in life in general, are the ones that are engaged

01:37

and who want to know not just what prescription I gave them, but all about themselves.

01:44

They want to see all of their lab tests, or they want to talk to me about what effect not getting enough sleep at night has on them.

01:52

And that only happens when they have the time, and the space, and the permission, which is a big fault of ours

01:59

in that hurried medical world, to ask something and to say something. We have to figure out a new approach that's

02:07

going to get people to engage in their own health every day. And that's the only solution to obesity, or lack of exercise,

02:16

or frankly, dealing with a frantic society, time driven, time pressured society, is to get people to say, hey,

02:25

I am in charge of these things. Most of the decisions that people make about their health, most of the important decisions that people make about their health,

02:32

aren't made in the doctor's office. So the grand poobah is not there giving instruction

02:39

to the person when they're deciding what to choose for dinner. Part of the secret is engaging people regularly,

02:47

so that they do develop these reactions, these reflexes, that are healthy reflexes.