Kaiser Permanente asks: How do you ‘let patients help’?

Holly Potter is vice president of public relations for Kaiser Permanente.

Every year at Kaiser Permanente, we hold a National Quality Conference to educate our workforce on advancements in what we call the "Big Q"—or clinical quality, service quality, patient safety, resource stewardship, risk management, and equitable care.

Central to improvement in each of these areas is ensuring that care is patient-centered. Last week, nearly 3,000 conference registrants (including myself) had the honor of hearing Dave deBronkart (@ePatientDave) share his story—illustrating how patients can be the best resource for improving health and health care.

Though not a Kaiser Permanente patient, Dave made a compelling case for the value of ensuring that all patients be e-Patients, with the "e" standing for "equipped, enabled, empowered, and engaged." If you have never heard Dave's story, watch his speech at TEDx in Holland. As you'll see, Dave inspires the audience to begin chanting "let patients help!"

At the heart of Dave's story is his relationship with his doctor. Over the course of his diagnosis and treatment, he and his doctor talked and shared information. His doctor encouraged him to explore ACOR and learn from other patients. Partnering with his doctor and online communities, he learned his options and was able to make an informed choice about his care options—shared knowledge that saved his life. I'm confident that Dave's willingness to share his story and has saved many others.

Everyone in health care can and should learn from patients' stories. As communicators, we have a great opportunity to share the voice of the patient—within our organizations and beyond. We also have the opportunity to inspire our patients and members to actively engage in their health, as well as connect with others.

I'm proud to work for an organization that takes this opportunity seriously. More than 3 million Kaiser Permanente members use My Health Manager to view their medical record, email their doctors and manage their care and treatment. Putting that information into the hands of patients is improving both their satisfaction and their clinical outcomes.

Reinforcing the message that the patient must always be at the center of health care decisions, I'm happy to say, we recently launched a video blog that shares stories of care in the patients' own words. These patient stories have inspired the communicators on our team and I'm confident that their stories will inspire our caregivers and countless other patients.

While what we're doing now is great, Dave inspired me to think about what more we can do as communicators. Certainly, we can seek opportunities to connect our members and patients to online communities like ACOR, Inspire, and Patients Like Me where they can find the information and support they need.

I also believe we have an obligation to think about how we can help our organizations be more transparent. How can we ensure that our organization is fully communicating treatment options to every patient? How can we put vital information in our patients' hands so they can make fully informed decisions?

There are no easy answers to these questions, but we need to begin to answer them. What can you and your organization do to "let patients help"?