Want better patient engagement? Help families make better decisions.
Over the past several months, I’ve personally had a front-row seat to a very real, very complex health care decision-making process: my wife is facing major spine surgery. Plagued by chronic back pain for years, she has managed the condition through a combination of exercise, physical therapy, chiropractic care and over-the-counter medications. But when her trusted physical therapist said, “It’s time to think about surgery,” her world changed overnight. Traditional thinking in health care would argue that no one belongs in the middle of a complex decision between a patient and her physician. But the reality is that after finding an orthopedic surgeon who was highly competent, experienced and specialized in spine surgery, her brief discussion with him had limited impact on her decision of