William Osler, often called the father of modern medicine, famously advised his students: “Just listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis.” A century later, clinicians and health system leaders started tuning out the patient’s voice, turning instead to electronic health records and the latest care protocols to manage their most complicated and high-need patients. We believe it’s time for an urgent and strategic reset. The factors that lead people to become our nation’s costliest are complex. But they call for, at the start, the simplest intervention: listening.
Listening Is a Lost Art in Medicine. Here’s How to Rediscover It
The highest-need patients are the least likely to be heard.
November 06, 2017
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Summary.
High-need individuals tend to be disproportionately older, female, white, less educated, and publicly insured, have fair to poor self-reported health, and be susceptible to lack of coordination within the health care system. Overall, these patients make up just 5% of the patient population but account for nearly half the spending on health care in the United States. Over the past several years, leaders at Mount Sinai Health System have focused on developing a new generation of clinical services for high-need patients by drawing heavily on strategies pioneered by others across the nation. Central to effective strategies is listening — to patients, colleagues, and other pioneering organizations.