Educating patients

OK class, pop quiz: What are the odds that a mammogram will result in supplemental imaging or biopsy? Where can you find the most affordable provider of advanced imaging? How can you quantify the discomfort felt by patients undergoing colonoscopy?

These questions and more were addressed in this week’s top stories, which shared the theme of patient education. Part of a provider’s responsibility when caring for patients is to make sure they are well-informed so they can make smart decisions about their own health, and this week we learned about some tools to help in this effort.

For example, certain procedures cause a lot of anxiety in patients, so it would be helpful for them to have some sort of index to rate the short-term effects of diagnostic testing. The recently developed Testing Morbidities Index (TMI) does just that, and it was put to the test in an article published online in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. Researchers applied the TMI to 100 patients who had recently undergone breast core-needle biopsies and 109 patients who underwent screening colonoscopies as a way of evaluating the index. Results indicated that the morbidity profile differed between the two procedures, with pre-procedure discomfort higher for colonoscopy while anxiety was greater for biopsy. The TMI needs to be applied to other tests, but this early study shows the index’s potential as a patient education tool.

Educated patients also make for smart shoppers, as was shown in a study published this week in JAMA. In this study, a price transparency platform from San Francisco-based Castlight Health, a healthcare management technology company, was put to the test to see how it impacted claims payments for procedures that included advanced imaging. Claims from more than 500,000 patients who had access to the platform were analyzed, and results showed that those who used the platform had relative claim payments for imaging more than 13 percent lower than those who did not use the price transparency tool.

Finally, with the debate over best practices in breast cancer screening ongoing, patients may have lots of questions about what screening strategy is best for them. The American College of Radiology, through its “Mammography Saves Lives” initiative, released an infographic that can be shared with patients to help educate them on the actual risks of call back, supplemental imaging and biopsy.

We’ll keep an eye out for more resources that you can use to help educate your patients. Class dismissed!

-Evan Godt
Editor – Health Imaging