*Sara Johnson, PhD
Pro-Change Behavior Systems, Inc.
Demo-Interactive Presentation – Business Track
Saturday, Sept 29, 2012: 1:35 PM – 1:50 PM – Demo Pavilion
*Presenting Speaker
Multiple experts have underscored the need for more informed, engaged, and active health care consumers, but interventions aimed at promoting more active involvement in health care have had limited success with adoption, sustainability, or generalizability. Effective and scalable interventions that leverage cost effective and existing delivery channels are needed. This demonstration will showcase the Proactive Health Consumer Program (PHC)–an interactive, mobile-optimized computer-tailored intervention (CTI) and dynamic web portal that promotes personal responsibility for health and health care by promoting: informed decision making; shared decision making between patients and health care providers; financially responsible use of health services; and engaging in ongoing wellness activities.
The program targets consumers in their roles as patients, purchasers, and providers of health care.
PHC is based on the Transtheoretical model (TTM), a leading model of behavior change that allows the tailoring of interventions to users’ readiness to change. Embedded in the program is a tailoring software engine that provides evidence-based behavior change messages for each participant based on his or her responses to reliable and valid assessments of behavior change variables, including readiness to change, perceived benefits and barriers, and self-efficacy. The portal is then dynamically built for each user. Tailored behavior change interventions of this nature are the key to bridging the gap between providing information and ensuring it is used.
Many of the activities are designed to assist the patient in maximizing the time available in their visit and communicating effectively with a busy health care provider. One interactive tool allows the patient to type in questions or concerns he or she might want to talk about with his/her doctor and rank them in the order of importance. The rank order can be changed as new issues arise. The list can be printed and taken to a doctor visit. In another activity, an interactive script maker gives the patient ideas about how to communicate with the doctor about 17 common issues (e.g., discussing an embarrassing topic). The scripts can be modified, printed or emailed to a health care provider. Thus patients are being assisted in getting ready to share in decision-making, being provided with tools to facilitate that participation, building listening and speaking skills, and interacting with activities to assist them in maximizing their visits and overcoming barriers to their participation—all without additional burden on the health care provider.
Feedback is dynamically updated for the user each time he or she returns to the program. The PHC program has the capacity to send individually tailored text messages to participants that provide both a reminder to return to the program and a behavior change communication that could increase use of appropriate change strategies. Sample text messages will be shared.
The PHC program can also be linked to other databases, benefit management systems, or electronic health records for seamless implementation. Planned deployment channels include community health centers, health insurers deploying consumer drive health care plans, employers, or primary care practices implementing a patient centered medical home model.
