Tag Archives: time

June 23, 2018

Don’t miss out! RETAIN grants are a big opportunity

RETAIN is a five year and $100 million Federal Grant program that state agencies must nominally lead.  However, the leadership team must be multi-stakeholder and include an organization that actually delivers hands-on medical care.  Moreover, the states will probably end up contracting for delivery of the many services by individuals or organizations in the private sector. Proposals are due in ONE MONTH – so if you’re tempted to get involved, join our list-serv now and learn what you need to do!  See more below.

RETAIN is the biggest opportunity for physicians who practice occupational medicine since the 1970’s — when NIOSH and OSHA were established. It’s also a huge opportunity for other professionals with expertise in preventing needless work disability during the early phase of the stay-at-work/return-to-work (SAW/RTW) process:  the first few weeks and months of an injury/illness episode.

RETAIN requires states to get involved VERY EARLY in new injury and illness episodes among workers they haven’t had on their radar — and arrange provision of several kinds of services with which these agencies have had little/no familiarity. Most of the state agencies that received the RFP (and must lead RETAIN in their state) have been confused and caught flat-footed by it. They really need professionals with expertise at the interface between healthcare and the workplace to pitch in at several levels:

– to help NOW with project design and proposal writing
– once the project launches, to help oversee, manage and tweak the project at the top level,
– in individual cases, to deliver specific services during the first weeks and months of work interruption. (In fact, eligibility for RETAIN program services ends after 6 months of work absence.)

I’ve set up a free list-serv for everyone who is interested in the possibility of getting involved with their state’s RETAIN project. My personal goal is to help as many states as possible to recruit appropriate leadership teams and write successful bids. The project is so unusual, I don’t think there will be many. The Feds plan to accept EIGHT bids (from eight states).

JOIN US — if you’re an occ doc or SAW/RTW professional who is willing to wade in, introduce yourself to strangers, and then join the small team that will be developing your state’s overall project design and writing its proposal (bid) between now and July 23. Once you join the list-serv, go to our website and read the small number of earlier and information-filled emails that will get you oriented and on the right track. You’ll find links to the RFP itself along with many other resources.

To join the RETAINers list-serv, go to https://groups.io/g/RETAINers and click on JOIN THIS GROUP

NOTE: Think big.  This is the beginning of an effort to knit together some holes in our social fabric to meet the needs of people who have been falling through the cracks.  The Feds are looking for proposals that will help workers with new health problems — regardless of what caused them.  The point is to help ANY worker for whom a new health condition is causing work interruption and, if the right things fail to happen, could threaten their job. Needlessly losing one’s livelihood and ending up on SSDI is a very poor outcome of a health condition — ESPECIALLY when it didn’t need to happen.

Leave a reply

September 9, 2016

Pithy 4-min Video & 1-page Manifesto for you to use

Mathematica just released a 4-minute video of me pointing out why the work disability prevention model is important — in plain language.  The video was made at the request of the US Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP).  The main messages in the video are:

  1. MILLIONS of Americans lose their jobs every year due to injury and illness;
  2. Worklessness and job loss have been shown to harm physical and mental health as well as personal, family, social, and economic well-being;
  3. Worklessness and job loss should therefore be considered poor healthcare outcomes;
  4. Unexpectedly poor outcomes can often be prevented and there is good research evidence about how to do that;
  5. Changes need to be made so that vulnerable people get what they need at the time when they need it — and as a result are able to have the best possible life outcome, stay in the workforce, and keep earning their own living.

In addition, the video also explains WHY and HOW some people have unexpectedly poor outcomes of conditions that do not normally cause significant work disruption and job loss.  Unless you’re in my line of work, it is hard to understand why things turn out badly in some cases and not in others — especially if they looked exactly the same at the beginning.

The video is loosely based on a one-page Work Disability Prevention Manifesto I wrote.  I put a draft of it on this blog last spring and got many useful comments.  After many revision cycles, it is now as succinct and compelling as I know how to make it.  ODEP had no hand in the Manifesto; it’s my independent work.

I’m glad I can now share these two items with you because the WORLD needs to know more about these issues—and most PEOPLE in the world have a very short attention span and no interest in the topic to begin with.   I hope you will pass this stuff along to the people whose thinking you want to change or whose buy in you need. Then maybe THEY will pass it along to others as well.  Social norms ONLY SHIFT when people share powerful mind-opening ideas with one another.

Lastly, let’s all stop speaking ABOUT these problems.  It is time for us all to start speaking FOR action and FOR changes.

WORK DISABILITY PREVENTION MANIFESTO
©Jennifer Christian, MD, MPH August 2016

Preventable job loss demands our attention

  • Millions of American workers lose their jobs each year due to injury, illness or a change in a chronic condition.
  • Preserving people’s ability to function and participate fully in everyday human affairs, including work, is a valuable health care outcome, second only to preserving life, limb, and essential bodily functions.
  • A new medical problem that simultaneously threatens one’s ability to earn a living creates a life crisis that must be addressed rapidly and wisely. Most people are unprepared for this double-headed predicament. It can overwhelm their coping abilities.
  • When medical conditions occur or worsen, especially common ones, most people are able to stay at or return to work without difficulty. However, many prolonged work disability cases covered by private- and public-sector benefits programs began as very common health problems (for example, musculoskeletal pain, depression, and anxiety) but had unexpectedly poor outcomes including job loss.
  • Loss of livelihood due to medical problems is a poor health outcome. Worklessness is harmful to people’s health, as well as to their family, social, and economic well-being.

Why do such poor outcomes occur?

  • Medical conditions by themselves rarely require prolonged work absence, but it can look that way. Both treatment and time off work are sometimes considered benefits to be maximized, rather than tools to be used judiciously.
  • Professionals typically involved in these situations (health care providers, employers, and benefits administrators) do not feel responsible for avoiding job loss.
  • Unexpectedly poor outcomes are frequently due to a mix of medical and nonmedical factors. Diagnosed conditions are inappropriately treated; others (especially psychiatric conditions) are unacknowledged and untreated. The employer, medical office, and insurance company (if there is one) operate in isolation, with little incentive to collaborate.
  • Without the support of a team focused on helping them get their lives back on track, people can get lost in the health care and benefits systems. With every passing day away from work, the odds worsen that they will ever return. After a while, they start to redefine themselves as too sick or disabled to work.
  • When people lose their jobs and do not find new ones, they barely get by on disability benefits and are vulnerable to other detrimental effects.

How can we fix this problem?

  • Good scientific evidence exists about how unexpectedly poor outcomes are created, how to avoid them, and how health care and other services can protect jobs.
  • Health-related work disruption should be viewed as a life emergency. Productive activity should be a part of treatment regimens.
  • When work disruption begins, it can be both effective and cost-beneficial to have a coordinator help the individual, treating physician, and employer communicate and focus everyone’s attention on maximizing recovery, restoring function, accommodating irreversible losses, and making plans for how the individual can keep working, return to work, or quickly find a more appropriate job.
  • We must urgently establish accountability for work disability and job loss in our workforce, health care, and disability benefits systems and build nationwide capacity to consistently deliver services—just in time, when needed—that help people stay at work or return to work.
Leave a reply

July 21, 2016

Pay attention to burden of treatment – and its impact

Think about it: Becoming a patient can sometimes be like getting three new (and unwanted) part-time jobs:

(1) arranger/consumer of professional healthcare services,
(2) manager of self-care and activity adaptation regimens, and
(3) manager of administrative issues (benefits, purchasing, and billing).

The tasks involved in those additional jobs can sometimes be so time-consuming they interfere with other important responsibilities (like going to work). Some tasks may be beyond the patient’s capability and so don’t get done right – or done at all.

The POINT here is that Burden of Treatment is a significant but under-acknowledged and thus unmanaged issue.  Anyone “in the business”  for a while has had a vague sense that this is a practical concern with major impact.  But to date we’ve just been haphazardly addressing it.

All stakeholders in health-related work disruptions do need to stay alert to how much time and effort patients/claimants/employees are spending on treatment and care regimens of various kinds (and their attendant administrative/financial issues).  We also need to assess how well they are managing that burden.  Once we DO start to pay more attention to this issue and see how the impact varies from one treatment regimen to another, we will see that we have an opportunity to work on REDUCING BoT.

Figuring out how to systematically classify and document BoT is a necessary early step to increase awareness and opportunities for active management. There may well be a vast literature on this topic — but I am unaware of it. The particular study whose abstract appears below reminded me that this issues exists.  It explores whether/how to use the terminology in the ICF to document BoT. (ICF is the International Classification of Function, the lesser known companion to the ICD – International Classification of Disease.)  And I don’t know whether the ICF addresses the burden of administrative issues. Do you?

TAKEAWAY MESSAGE:   Let’s all think more about what a high burden of treatment means for our patients/claimants/employees, and what we can do to reduce it.

GONCALVES AV, Jacome CI, Demain SH, Hunt KJ, et al.
Burden of treatment in the light of the international classification of functioning, disability and health: a “best fit” framework synthesis.
Disabil Rehabil. 2016 Jul 3:1-9. [Epub ahead of print]
PubMed

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: This systematic literature review aimed to (1) summarize and explain the concept of Burden of Treatment (BoT) using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) terminology, and (2) inform the development of a future Comprehensive ICF Core Set for BoT.

METHOD: Searches on EMbase, Medline, CINAHL and PsycINFO were conducted. Only qualitative studies were considered for inclusion. The screening and data extraction stages were followed by a “Best-fit” framework synthesis and content analysis, using the established ICF linking rules. Screening, data extraction, quality appraisal and data analysis were performed by two independent researchers.

RESULTS: Seventeen studies were included in this review. The “Best-fit” framework synthesis generated 179 subthemes which identified that BoT impacts negatively on body functions and structures, restricts valued activities and participation and influences contextual factors through life roles, self-identify and relationships. The identified subthemes were linked to 77 ICF categories.

CONCLUSIONS: This study is part of the preparatory phase of a Comprehensive ICF Core Set for BoT and our findings will inform the further needed studies on this phase. The use of ICF terminology to describe BoT provides an accessible route for understanding this complex concept, which is pivotal for rethinking clinical practice. Implications for rehabilitation Health professionals applying the ICF should consider the negative impact of interventions on patient’s life roles and self-identity, body functions and structures and on valued activities and participation. Health professionals who may be concerned about the treatment burden being experienced by their patients can now use the ICF terminology to discuss this with the multidisciplinary team. Poor adherence to rehabilitation programs may be explained by an increased BoT. This phenomenon can now be mapped to the ICF, and coded using a framework well known by multidisciplinary teams.

Leave a reply

November 19, 2015

Early EVENTS influence outcomes: You have power to make good things happen!

Few people realize how important early EVENTS are in determining the eventual outcome of a work disruption due to a health problem, particularly the most common kinds of conditions:   low back pain and other kinds of muscle and joint sprains and strains, depression, and anxiety.

Let’s call this a poor outcome:  a failed medical recovery that results in over-impairment and excessive “disability” accompanied by work absence and loss of employment that could have been avoided.  And let’s call this a good outcome:  the fullest possible medical recovery with the least possible physical or mental impairment and the smallest possible impact on the rhythm of everyday life, including minimal lost work time and continued employment.   Do you agree?

Here’s the exciting “so what” about this news that EVENTS influence outcomes:  all three of the professionals who respond to an individual CAN influence what some of those EVENTS are going to be.  Those three professionals are:  the treating doctor, the workplace supervisor, and the benefit claims handler.  This news means that each of them actually has some POWER to nudge things in a good or bad direction!!

See below for a brief description of why early events are so important, and how the experience of  people destined for lucky or unlucky outcomes differs.  In fact, these ideas are some of the main concepts of the work disability prevention model.  (NOTE:  The scientific articles that support the  evidence-based concepts are briefly noted in parentheses.  Their full literature citations appear in the list of References in our report that recommends the establishment of a nationwide Health & Work Service.)

When a working person’s life is disrupted by a new or changed illness or injury, the first few days and weeks after onset are an especially critical period.  The likelihood of a good long-term outcome is being influenced, either favorably or unfavorably, by some simple things that either do or do not happen during that interval (Bowling 2000; Cornelius et al. 2011; Franklin et al. 2013; Loisel and Anema 2013; Nicholas et al. 2011; Shaw et al. 2013; Waddell and  Burton  2004; Waddell,  Burton,  and  Main  2001).  It  is  the  optimal  window  of  opportunity  to improve outcomes by simultaneously attending to the worker’s basic needs and concerns (Shaw et al. 2013)  as  well  as  by coordinating  the  medical,  functional  restoration,  and  occupational  aspects  of  the situation in a coordinated fashion (Wickizer et al. 2011).

The  way  the  episode  unfolds  over  time  in  all  dimensions — biological,  psychological,  social,  and economic — can have a big impact on the outcome. Events that occur can either mitigate or aggravate existing  risk  factors  in  the  situation,  leading  to  better  or  worse  outcomes.  There  are  usually  many opportunities to actively influence the course of events immediately after onset of a health problem (and  many  fewer  opportunities  later  on),  but  today  there  are  few  resources  devoted  to  finding  and exercising these opportunities.  Most of the current attempts to steer situations to a better outcome are made long after the best opportunities have passed by.

The best opportunity for basic intervention appears to last about 12 weeks or three months (DeWitt 1995; Franklin et al. 2013; Hashemi et al. 1997; Johnson and Fry 2002; Loisel and Anema 2013; Turner et  al.  2008)  although  some  data  shows  it  ending  by  6  months  (Rumack  1987;  Waddell  and  Burton 2004). A modest set of simple services —that embody an immediate, systematic, pro-active, integrated, and multidimensional approach — can mitigate the potentially destructive impact of common injuries, illnesses, and chronic conditions on quality of life among the working population (Burton et al. 2013; Hill et al. 2010; Iles, Wyatt, and Pransky 2012; Kendall et al. 2009; Lagerveld et al. 2012; Loisel and Anema  2013;  McLaren,  Reville,  and  Seabury  2010;  Mitchell  2012;  Nicholas  et  al.  2011;  Shaw  et  al. 2013; Sullivan et al. 2005; Turner et al. 2008; Waddell and Burton 2004; Wickizer et al. 2011).

This new approach will allow people to avoid the kind of adverse secondary consequences of medical conditions that they too often experience today (Institute of Medicine 2001; Dartmouth 2008; Franklin and  Mueller  2015).  Those  consequences  are  not  usually  obvious  until  months  or  years  later,  after unfortunate things have happened. The unlucky ones have received sub-optimal health care, been left with undertreated or iatrogenic impairment, become dependent on opioids, found themselves socially isolated, lost their jobs, withdrawn from the workforce, lost economic independence, and ended up on long-term disability benefits programs or SSDI in order to survive (Darlow 2011; Franklin et al. 2008; Franklin et al. 2014; Franklin and Mueller 2015; Habeck, Hunt, and VanTol 1998; Nguyen et al.)

CLARIFYING KEY TERMS

Figuring out where the opportunity to improve outcomes actually lies will be easier if we first clarify some terms that are often used carelessly or that mean different things to various audiences.

Work Disability vs. Disability
In the world of employment and commercial insurance, the word  “disability” is carelessly used.  In this world, the correct term is often “work disability” –which means absence from or lack of work attributed to a health condition.

According to the ADA, disabilities are impairments affecting major life functions (such as work).  Having a disability need not result in work disability.  This is a core concept embodied in the Americans with Disabilities Act. Similarly, having symptoms or a diagnosis need not (and usually does not) result in work disability.

Medical Recovery vs. Functional Restoration
Medical recovery refers to the resolution (disappearance or remission) of the underlying pathological process. Functional restoration refers to reestablishing the usual rhythm of participation in everyday life including the ability to go about one’s regular daily business: performing necessary tasks and enjoyable activities at home and work, and participating fully in society. Functional restoration often accompanies medical recovery, but not always.  Even when medical recovery is not possible, restoration of function often is.   In some cases, it may require separate and specific professional attention.  Functional restoration may include rehabilitation (broadly defined), the successful use of assistive technology, adaptive equipment, and/or reasonable accommodation in the workplace.

Anticipatory  programs  that  ensure  the  right  things  happen  from  the  start  and  include  early identification of those needing extra support are the simplest and most effective way to prevent later adverse secondary consequences of these conditions. A professional needs to provide the following services throughout the immediate response period (which typically ends with stable RTW or 12 weeks post onset).  These services are not generally available today, especially to lower-wage workers and those who work for small firms:

  • oversee and champion the affected individual’s stay-at-work and return-to-work (SAW/RTW) process until it is successful.
  • conduct a quick initial assessment and planning session that considers the individual’s entire situation, screens for known risks for poor outcomes, helps the individual and/or employer make a  SAW/RTW plan and  support them  in  carrying  it  out;
  • drive towards the best outcome by:
    — expediting and coordinating external medical,  rehabilitative  and  other  kinds  of helping services, including referrals for specialized services as needed to address remediable obstacles in a variety of life domains;
    — facilitating communications among all involved parties, ensuring they get the information they need so everyone has a shared picture of the situation and the goal;
    — taking a problem-solving approach with affected individuals, treating physicians, employers, and payers.

If RTW has not occurred by the time the 12 week period has ended, that should trigger a hand-off  to another professional with broader expertise for a deeper assessment which is likely to reveal the need for a different strategy, revised goals, a new approach, or the involvement of other disciplines.

Leave a reply

October 14, 2015

Let’s stop using words with a “nocebo” effect!

I hereby nominate the first three candidates — the terms “I can’t”,”injured worker,” and “injury”– for elimination from the lexicon of workers’ compensation because they are causing harm.  After having talked with Kristina Phillips again about her trouble with her workers’ compensation claim, I see the negative impact those three terms have had on her life.

Kristina’s had a very rocky course with initial denials of coverage for some parts of her injury, long delays of authorizations for specialty as well as rehabilitation care, unhelpful advice from the state’s ombudsmen, an unresponsive attorney, multiple court hearings, etc — all while she has been living with ongoing pain and limitation of motion.  She’s better, but not ALL better yet — and it’s been 18 months since she was attacked on the subway.

As we talked, she remarked that she finally woke up and realized that in order to get better she HAD to stop using the phrase “I can’t” and replace it “HOW CAN I do this?”   Every time she said “I can’t”, her world got smaller.   She was becoming a hermit.  She had stopped leaving the house whenever it rained or during commuting hours because she was avoiding the New York subway system.  Because they are so crowded, Kristina was concerned about being jostled which causes her pain.   She was unwilling to explain her situation to strangers and ask them not to lean into her or push her, much less ask them to move their stuff so she could sit down.  Shortly after she swore off “I can’t”, she realized she also had to start asking for help.  Once she became comfortable with telling people she has a problem, it has been gratifying to see how kindly most of them respond. The new approach has allowed her to expand the times when she can use the subways — which means she is out and about more frequently now.

That got me to thinking.  I had heard Kristina mention her “injury” several times. She kept talking about it as though her wounds are still present, despite the fact that her injury occurred 18 months ago.  In fact, those injured tissues have probably been healed for more than a year.   What she’s actually dealing with are the consequences of the injury, not the injury itself.

Calling oneself “injured” is similar to calling oneself “sick” — in a vulnerable state with life disrupted, out of commission, off on a sideline away from the regular rhythm of life.  Someone who describes themselves as “recovering” or “dealing with the aftermath” may be struggling, but it’s because they are wending their way back into the mainstream of life.

I suddenly realized that the WORD “injury” has probably been intensifying Kristina’s distress and symptoms, and delaying resolution of this episode in her life.  That is by definition the “nocebo” effect — the evil twin brother of the placebo effect, in which words or beliefs or sugar pills relieve symptoms and allows healing.   So, I recommended that “injury” should be the NEXT term she stops using to describe her current situation.   And on the spot, I educated her about the basic biology of how fast tissues heal.

It depends on the type of tissue.  Generally speaking, the cornea of the eye heals in about 24 hours; a simple skin wound usually takes 7-10 days; bones and muscles often take 6 weeks, sometimes 8 to 9 and occasionally 12 weeks.  Nerves can take months (and sometimes years) to regrow.  But as a rough rule of thumb for most injuries, all the tissues have usually healed by 90 days — no matter what happened.  Additional gains may be made slowly for a year or more, often as the result of rehabilitation and reconditioning.   Function and comfort often continue to improve after healing is complete.

One way to see this clearly is to take the case of a person who suffered a major body burn — a widespread and deep one that went down into the muscle.  The burning itself was over in minutes.  Some areas of skin and underlying tissues were destroyed and other areas were left damaged and weeping.  The tissue healing process was in full swing by 7 days and by the time it was complete, had produced extensive scar.  The skin was as healed as it was going to get, but it left behind stiff and painful scar.  The scar is a CONSEQUENCE of the injury, not a sign that the burn injury is on-going.   Rehabilitation for burn patients focuses on minimizing the impact of scarring on appearance and function.

Kristina listened hard and seemed to “get it” – but not completely.  She is still in the habit of viewing herself as “hurt” (fragile).  When something happens and she feels pain, she may be interpreting it as a sign she is being damaged or re-injured further – rather than seeing herself as a person who is stuck living with the painful (but harmless) consequences of a previous injury.

So, in my view, the most accurate way to describe Kristina’s situation is that she HAD an injury and is still dealing WITH and recovering FROM its effects.  The injury is in the past.  It is not accurate to say she still HAS an injury.  The choice of words make a real difference.

And lastly, the term “injured worker” has got to go because those words communicate no possibility of either recovery or a positive future.  How can people who’ve had an accident at work ever consider themselves well as long as they are being called by that name?  That term doesn’t even hint at the fact that the vast majority of people who have an injury recover promptly and heal completely.  The unlucky people who don’t end up fully healed are left with things like scars and stiff joints, not unhealed wounds.  The previous term “claimant” was discredited and abandoned because it was too impersonal — but it did not doom the person to a negative and unchanging future.

All along, Kristina has been strongly motivated to get better and get back to earning a good living.   She has been doing everything she can to get herself better and to advocate for herself in the “systems”.  Imagine the “nocebo” impact of these three terms on a person without the inner resources Kristina has brought to bear!

What does this mean for you?   If you are involved with the workers’ compensation system, please abandon the term “injured worker” and “injury” when discussing events longer than 3 months ago.  Talk about “recovery” or “recuperation” instead.  And maybe we should go back to “claimant”, or an even better term.  For now, a few of my colleagues and I have started saying “affected person”.   And if you are a person who had a musculoskeletal work-related injury more than 12 weeks ago, please assume that your tissues are healed.  And, like Kristina start saying “how can I do this” instead of “I can’t.” It is time to start dealing with the consequences of that injury and get the whole thing behind you.   Focus on accepting what you’re stuck with (at least for now), rehabilitate yourself, get back in the best shape you can — and focus on minimizing its impact on the quality of your life and your future!

Leave a reply

August 12, 2015

Who will address working people’s reasonable concerns when illness or injury disrupt their lives?

What do working people wonder and worry about when their lives (and work) have just been disrupted by a new illness, injury, or a change in a chronic condition?

While creating a course to train doctors how to meet their patient’s needs, we realized we had to know what those needs were.  It seemed obvious that patients would want to know what is wrong with them and what kind of medical care they need.  But beyond those things, we came up with a list of predictable and totally reasonable issues:

How long am I going to be laid up (out of commission)?
How long do I have to take it easy?
When I can go back to doing my usual stuff?
In the meanwhile, what can I still do? What shouldn’t I do?
What can I do to speed my recovery?
If I can’t work, how will we pay our bills next month?
When will life be back to normal? …..if ever?
What does this mean about me?   My future?
What is this going to do to my livelihood?  What will this do to us financially?
Who will help me?  Who can I trust?  Who has my best interests at heart?

I often show this list when I am speaking to groups about how to improve outcomes for people with common health conditions like back pain.  It always rings true with the audience.  After one presentation, an influential executive (in a wheelchair with quadriplegia) told me that she had had all of those concerns immediately upon awakening after her accident.

Here’s my question:   How are people getting these questions and concerns answered — when and by whom?  The standard design of a medical visit (memorized by all physicians during our medical training) DOES NOT include a time for doing it.  There is no sub-heading in our report format called:  Patient Education,  Instruction, and Guidance.  If it is happening, it is spotty at best.

So if most doctors are not answering these questions, who is?   Which of the other professionals who are responsible for responding to life & work disruption in working people IS going to address them?   Unless one of these “experts” does so, the people will have to come up with their own answers.  Yet how many are prepared to do that?   They will come up with their own best guesses (which may be wacky) or may turn to their family, friends, co-worker, neighbor, union steward, or a lawyer for answers (who may or may not give them a bum steer).

What does this mean for you?  If you are committed to better service (and/or want to avoid the trouble caused by bad advice), figure out a way to meet people’s totally reasonable needs for information and advice.   If you are a treating clinician, consider making a revision to your standard visit protocol and report templates by adding that missing section:  Patient Education, Instruction & Guidance.

Another simple idea for healthcare providers, employers or insurers is to create a standard operating procedure to mail out or hand out a brochure.  The 60 Summits Project developed a fact sheet for employees whose health conditions have just started to disrupt their work — and a fact sheet for supervisors on how to manage the situation in the workplace..  Feel free to use these sheets as is, or remove the 60 Summits logo and revise them to suit yourself.  But please do SOMETHING!

 

Leave a reply

July 20, 2015

My “mini-manifesto” to reduce spine disability

You may be interested in the “mini-manifesto” I delivered this past Saturday 7/18 at the Spine 10×25 Research Summit in Chicago hosted by the North American Spine Foundation.  They have declared a worthy and very ambitious goal:  to reduce spine disability by 10 percent by the year 2025.  Thus the name: Spine 10×25. Pronounce it like you’re buying lumber – “10 by 25”.

(You can see the video and listen to my talk —  or even the ENTIRE 8 hour event because it was live-streamed and recorded.  Click here to do so.  Advance the recording by moving the blue dot along the horizontal line.  My talk starts at 5:31:50 and goes until 5:51:30.)

Do you know of any other medical group that has drawn a bold line in the sand like that?  I don’t.  It had never occurred to me that a professional society would set out to measurably move the needle.  They just don’t take on that type of project.  Most healthcare professional associations content themselves with pontificating:  being experts and telling other people what to do and how to do it.

My own professional society (ACOEM – the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine) has made many significant contributions to society.  In particular, our evidence-based treatment guidelines are very well regarded and in use by several states.   ACOEM has produced many other useful publications that have had a positive impact.  In fact, some of them were developed under my leadership.  But, in the end, they all amount to pontification.

In 2006, I told ACOEM I didn’t want one of those documents to just sit on an electronic shelf. We had developed it in order to introduce the work disability prevention paradigm and shift the way all stakeholders think about work disability.  Entitled “Preventing Needless Work Disability By Helping People Stay Employed“, that report needed to go out into the world.  Thus, the 60 Summits Project was born to carry it into the 50 US states and 10 Canadian provinces of North America.  We created groups of volunteer professionals who planned and held 20 multi-stakeholder summit-type conferences in 12 states and 2 provinces.  We invited the attendees to consider ACOEM’s 16 recommendations for improving the stay-at-work and return-to-work process.  We asked them to decide if they liked each recommendation, and if so, to make a plan for how they were going to carry it out in their own business, community, and jurisdiction. (60 Summits eventually ran out of money and was mothballed.)

Then last month, the boldness of the Spine 10x 25 initiative made me realize that even The 60 Summits Project had a pontification angle to it.  Propagating a new way of thinking and discussing a set of recommendations for change is not the same thing as CARRYING them OUT.  I felt compelled to go and check out these NASF people and participate in their Spine 10×25 Research Summit.

My assigned topic was “Precedents and Prospects for Success” in a 15 minute time slot that got expanded to 20.  It seemed important to speak straight and share my ideas about what needs to be true in order for their goal to be realized.  I offered the audience a (draft) conceptual foundation to use as a context for change, as well a summary-level vision of the way things will look in the future WHEN things have ACTUALLY changed and spine disability is BEING REDUCED by 10%.  View it here. Remember to advance the recording to 5:31:50.

I may expand a bit on some of the main points of that mini-manifesto in later posts.  I developed all of those slides at the conference in order to take into account what the speakers said who had gone before me!  Luckily, I also had some time at lunch.  The tight time limit meant a few big ideas got short shrift.

 

 

Leave a reply

July 9, 2015

Here is where healthcare delivers VALUE — at the most fundamental level

When Professor Michael Porter did some “deep thinking” about where value is actually delivered in healthcare, he created a simple table that displays three tiers.   I found his second value tier EXCITING:   a Harvard Business School professor was validating my own “gut feel” about what really counts.   I summarize Porter’s three tiers this way (you can see his own table below this post):

Tier 1:   Delivering a desired health status — Avoiding death; optimizing health or extent of recovery.
Tier 2:   Minimizing the time it takes to restore the normal rhythm of everyday life — the cycle time required to produce a return to full participation in life (or best attainable level).
Tier 3:   Sustaining health or recovery, minimizing recurrences and iatrogenic (care-induced) illnesses and consequences.

Porter’s free article appeared in the December 23, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.  In his comments on Tier 2, Porter said:  “Cycle time is a critical outcome for patients — not a secondary process measure, as some believe.”  I have focused most of my professional energy for the last couple of decades on shortening cycle time — because it clearly produces better overall life outcomes.  I hoped Porter’s article would catalyze a lot of discussion and much more attention to Tier 2 — but not much luck so far.

Personally, I believe that the purpose of being alive is to live a fully human life.  From that perspective, the most VALUABLE healthcare services are those that minimize the impact of illness or injury on the rhythm of everyday life.  I want all healthcare professionals to START here:   Our FUNDAMENTAL purpose is to avert premature death, relieve fear and suffering, and to enhance, preserve,or restore as quickly as possible every patient’s ability to participate in the specific activities that make life worth living — which for many includes productive engagement / work.

We are a social species.  We have an innate drive to be useful in some way, to have a role to fulfill.  We are happier when we have a clear purpose in life. Those of us in the middle years of the human lifespan are DESIGNED to work — to hold up our end and contribute to the well-being of our family, clan, community or nation.  The well-being of our country, and even more broadly, the survival of our species depends on maintaining the right balance between dependents and contributors.

The AFL-CIO’s website says this about work:  “Work is what we do to better ourselves, to build dreams and to support our families. But work is more than that. Work cures, creates, builds, innovates and shapes the future. Work connects us all.” As the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer‘s Order for Compline (an evening prayer service) poetically puts it:  “Grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil.”

From What is Value in Healthcare by Michael Porter, NEJM 363;26 Dec 23, 2010, p 2479

From What is Value in Healthcare by Michael Porter, NEJM 363;26 Dec 23, 2010, p 2479

Leave a reply