Two Minute Drill: Tracking Patient Goals
This week Dr. Jay is traveling again, bringing you the Tuesday Two Minute Drill from Detroit, Michigan. In today’s TMD he is completing the circle on the discussion of self-discharges.
Patient goals
Today we are completing the circle on the discussion of self-discharges. We talked about the importance of tracking the ratio of self to doctor discharges. Then we talked about the importance of tracking the reasons why your patients self discharge from care. Now Dr. Jay is talking about how to move the needle to reduce the number of self discharges in your practice.
There are three steps to reduce the number of self discharges in your practice:
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- Make sure that somewhere on your intake paperwork or patient portal you have a spot for your patients to report what their goals of care are.
- When you do your report of findings discuss their specific goals with them and make sure you share the vision-making with them. Also, at this time make sure you employ shared decision-making. This means when you tell them this is the treatment plan, this is the treatment we are going to employ, this is the frequency and duration of your care based on the evidence and my clinical experience, make sure they say yes I understand, yes I agree, yes this is going to help me achieve my goals.
- When patients are coming in for regular visits and re-exam make sure you discuss what they believe their progress is toward their goals are. It’s not enough to just ask what is your pain level from 0-10. That’s not enough. You want to make sure you are also tracking their perceived progress toward their goal. So if they want to run a marathon, are they able to run a certain distance now that you’ve delivered a certain amount of care.
Tracking those goals that are important to your patient is critically important to reducing self-discharges. Employ these tactics to make sure your patients complete their care and get the best possible long-term outcome.
Head over to our Facebook page and let us know if you track this information already or how you are going to start tracking your patient’s goals.
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