A Patient's Journey to Pay a Healthcare Bill: It's Way Too Complicated.

The patient's financial experience is often complex and confusing.Recent regulations support bringing more transparency to healthcare billing processes.A patient journey map illustrates the patient experience in a healthcare process helping to identify improvement opportunities to better support patient-centered care.Price transparency can be increased by communicating the patient's financial responsibility early in the care process as well as simplifying patient communications.Digital health applications can help improve the patient financial experience and ultimately engagement in the payment process.Greater clarity and improved processes may occur if the patient's journey is visualized.

COVID-19 Pandemic Accelerates Need to Improve Online Patient Engagement Practices to Enhance Patient Experience.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to rapid change in health care, accelerating the use of digital health services, including telehealth. Moreover, growth in value-based care has compelled consumers to become more engaged in care processes. It has also provided opportunities to enhance patient experiences by increasing patients' access to online health information and services. This study assessed online patient engagement practices for 6 common patient touchpoints by reviewing the websites of the top 32 hospitals, including the top 10 children's hospitals. The great majority of these hospitals provided some information related to these patient touchpoints. However, the scope and extent of task automation varied significantly and many options were not convenient. Based on this study, it is clear that patient experience can be enhanced by improving online patient engagement, particularly during the current global pandemic.

Qualifications and Skills Required for Patient Experience Positions.

The need to provide patient-centered care has been recognized by major players in the health-care field. As such, attention has been placed on patients' experience of the health care they receive, and health-care organizations have been investing in patient experience initiatives and staffing to implement those initiatives. Given this, the objective for this study was to investigate the qualifications and skills US health-care organizations seek for patient experience positions through a content analysis of job postings. Results show that patient experience positions are largely found in health systems and hospitals. These positions include coordinators, directors, managers, specialists, and advisors. Five key skills were identified: collaborating with stakeholders; coordinating, planning, and executing service excellence programs; handling complaints and grievances; educating and training leadership and frontline employees; and providing excellent customer service. The skills vary depending on the position. The overall goal for patient experience positions is to ensure a complete and positive patient experience. As these patient experience positions are relatively new, requirements will likely evolve over time as organizations adapt patient experience strategies.

Effectiveness of a Patient Education Class to Enhance Knowledge about Lung Cancer Screening: a Quality Improvement Evaluation.

Best practices to facilitate high-quality shared decision-making for lung cancer screening (LCS) are not well established. In our LCS program, patients are first referred to attend a free group education class on LCS, taught by designated clinician specialists, before a personal shared decision-making visit is scheduled. We conducted an evaluation on  the effectiveness of this class to enhance patient knowledge and shared decision-making about LCS. For quality improvement purposes, participants were asked to complete one-page surveys immediately before and after class to assess knowledge and decision-making capacity regarding LCS. To evaluate knowledge gained, we tabulated the distributions of correct, incorrect, unsure, and missing responses to eight true-false statements included on both pre- and post-class surveys and assessed pre-post differences in the number of correct responses. To evaluate decision-making capacity, we tabulated the distributions of post-class responses to items on decision uncertainty. From June 2017 to August 2018, 680 participants completed both pre- and post-class surveys. Participants had generally poor baseline knowledge about LCS. The proportion who responded correctly to each knowledge-related statement increased pre- to post-class, with a mean difference of 0.9 (paired t test, p < 0.0001) in the total number of correct responses between surveys. About 70% reported having all the information needed to make a screening decision. Our results suggest that a well-designed group education class is an effective system-level approach for initially educating and equipping patients with appropriate knowledge to make informed decisions about LCS.

Mapping the Patient Journey Across the Continuum: Lessons Learned From One Patient's Experience.

Patient-centered care is essential for achieving high-quality and cost-effective health care. This is particularly important for patients with chronic or complex conditions who utilize more health-care services and require comprehensive care coordination. This case report draws on a longitudinal journey map-a valuable tool to capture patient experience and inform the care process-for a patient with multiple chronic conditions who needed a hip replacement. An analysis of the patient journey revealed 3 critical needs for a more patient-centered process: (1) making the patient health goal visible; (2) instigating transparent, shared decision-making; and (3) using a closed-loop communication process. Although key challenges exist, systems can facilitate more patient-centered care enabling health-care organizations to improve the patient experience across the continuum and provide higher quality care.

Competencies required for healthcare improvement positions.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to examine the competencies that US healthcare organizations require for quality and performance improvement positions. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A US healthcare improvement job posting content analysis was conducted using the HQ Essentials competency framework. FINDINGS: The HQ essentials competencies most desired for improvement positions include project management, training, data analysis and applied performance improvement methods. Competency requirements varied somewhat by job focus area: performance, quality, or process improvement, and Lean and Six Sigma. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Healthcare leaders may use the author's results to understand what competencies may be required for various improvement roles and to identify any gaps in required skills and knowledge areas that may need to be addressed. Educators and policy-makers should consider how these competencies align with employers' needs and what resources or professional development may be needed to address gaps. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This is the first healthcare improvement competencies analysis based on job postings.

Healthcare data scientist qualifications, skills, and job focus: a content analysis of job postings.

OBJECTIVE: Growth in big data and its potential impact on the healthcare industry have driven the need for more data scientists. In health care, big data can be used to improve care quality, increase efficiency, lower costs, and drive innovation. Given the importance of data scientists to U.S. healthcare organizations, I examine the qualifications and skills these organizations require for data scientist positions and the specific focus of their work. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A content analysis of U.S. healthcare data scientist job postings was conducted using an inductive approach to capture and categorize core information about each posting and a deductive approach to evaluate skills required. Profiles were generated for 4 job focus areas. RESULTS: There is a spectrum of healthcare data scientist positions that varies based on hiring organization type, job level, and job focus area. The focus of these positions ranged from performance improvement to innovation and product development with some positions more broadly defined to address organizational-specific needs. Based on the job posting sample, the primary skills these organizations required were statistics, R, machine learning, storytelling, and Python. CONCLUSIONS: These results may be useful to organizations as they deepen our understanding of the qualifications and skills required for data scientist positions and may aid organizations in identifying skills and knowledge areas that have been overlooked in position postings.

Qualifications and Skills Required for Performance Improvement: A Content Analysis of Job Postings.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Healthcare reform and the implementation of a national quality strategy in the United States have increased emphasis on quality improvement. Additionally, as healthcare organizations focus on value, they are paying more attention to quality in the context of cost and seeking to address these concerns through various performance improvement initiatives. Given the importance of these initiatives, this study analyzed the improvement job positions posted by U.S. healthcare organizations, specifically with respect to the qualifications and skills required. The author conducted a content analysis of improvement job postings using an inductive approach to capture and categorize core information about each posting and a deductive approach to evaluate skills required for selected job areas. The results show that healthcare organizations have invested in a breadth of improvement positions across all levels of the organization. Many positions are tied to strategic initiatives. The greatest number of positions posted were in the performance improvement area, followed by quality improvement, process improvement, Lean, Six Sigma, and Lean Six Sigma. These research results may be useful to healthcare organizations for strategic resource planning purposes and to educators and professional associations to target programs that offer students and members the opportunity to gain needed qualifications and skills.

Assessing the Effects of Financial Literacy on Patient Engagement.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated the relationship between financial literacy and patient engagement while considering the possible interaction effects due to patient financial responsibility and patient-physician shared decision making, and the impact of personal attributes. METHODS: Participants consisted of an Internet-based sample of American adults (N = 160). Hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationship of the study variables on patient engagement. RESULTS: We found that patient financial responsibility (ß = -.19, p < .05) and patient-physician shared decision-making (ß = .17, p < .05) predicted patient engagement. However, there was no statistically significant relationship between patient financial literacy and patient engagement; moreover, the moderation effects of patient financial responsibility and shared decision making with financial literacy also were not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing patient financial responsibility and patient-physician shared decision making can impact patient engagement. Understanding the predictors of patient engagement and the factors that influence financial behaviors may allow for the development of interventions to enable patients to make better healthcare decisions, and ultimately, improve health outcomes.