Aetna 2002 Annual Report Download - page 35

Information Therapy
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Chairman and CEO, Healthwise, Incorporated
Information prescriptions can help confused patients better
manage chronic illness and share in medical decisions.
Americans are confused about their health care. Good medical information is as important
to good health as surgeries, medical tests and medications. And yet the American health
care system does a particularly poor job of giving people the information they need. Most
physicians rely on “mouth-to-ear” technology to describe treatment risks or present self-
care recommendations to their patients. So much of the information is lost that patients
rarely understand enough to provide quality self-care or to share in medical decisions.
Information therapy can reduce the confusion. Information therapy is the prescription
of specific, evidence-based medical information to a specific patient, caregiver or consumer
at just the right time to help him or her make a specific health decision or behavior change.
When doctors prescribe specific information to their patients, three good things happen:
First, health care becomes less confusing. Information that is up to date, evidence based
and written to help people understand their options can greatly improve their adherence to
treatment and self-management plans.
Second, the clinician stays in the information loop. Even when patients discover good
information on the Web, its value is reduced because the physician has no good way to con-
firm its quality or relevance — that’s not so when the information is prescribed.
Third, and most important, information prescriptions result in better medical outcomes
and higher satisfaction. Information prescriptions bring the patient, and often the family,
into the center of care, integrating their efforts with those of the full-care team.
Particularly as we try to refocus our medical resources from acute care to chronic care,
we must gain full value from what the patient and the family can do for themselves.
Without integrating the self-management of the family, no system of chronic care can be
either economically or medically successful.
Fortunately, information therapy can be piggybacked on other health care IT applica-
tions at little cost or disruption to clinical work flow. Electronic medical record systems, for
example, can automatically deliver information prescriptions relevant to each patient’s
medical situation. With only a few extra clicks, the physician can send a clear and complete
information prescription that ends the patient’s confusion and smoothes the path for success-
ful treatments.
Information therapy shifts how we have traditionally thought about health information.
Instead of information just being “about” health care, information therapy makes informa-
tion an “essential part” of care. Any doctor visit, lab test or medication delivered without
an information prescription is incomplete.
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