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We've recently switched our blog across to a new address, so if you want to keep up to date with MES news and our blog posts then head over to our new site at membershipengagementservicesblog.wordpress.com  where you can access the same great content, in an even better format.

The true value of patient engagement

After 3 months abroad, my first week returned to my desk has been mostly spent reacquainting myself with what’s been going on in Healthcare. Being confident that no-one (except perhaps Andrew McClellan @HSJeditor) would be able to accurately digest  and regurgitate the entire sector in a week I settled for getting to grips with a selection of current themes.

After some exploratory googling, ‘patient engagement and its inherent value’ had piqued my interest. Nesta had recently suggested that the NHS in England could expect to save £4.4bn per annum in their recently published ‘Business Case for People Powered Health’.

For the past 6 years MES has been helping public and staff members of Foundation Trusts to influence their health providers. And now perhaps the other side of the coin is beginning to weigh-in with equal value, as we look to our clinicians to engage with patients to positively affect their behaviour.  

I learned from Forbes.com that pharmaceutical advertising in the states has been decreased for the 4^th consecutive year. However spend from Weight Watchers has been steadily increasing. Back on this side of the Atlantic it is common knowledge Doctors have regularly topped the list of most trusted professions since the yearly poll began in 1983.

Last year NHS Bedfordshire managed to lower the number of no-shows for appointments by 30% using 3 behaviour change techniques. At present it is easy to measure the financial cost of ‘Did not attends’, and therefore easy to justify spend on that mode of engagement. The good news is that it looks as though more value will be placed on this sort of activity.

Looks who's back...

 

If you work with us here at MES or follow us on Twitter or here on the blog, you may have noticed that Paul our Head of  Business Development has been a little quiet recently.  Well for the last three months he's been on sabbatical travelling the world.  During his travels he went skiing in France, and then travelled extensively through Central America visting places like Guatamala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.  

 

 

Well he's now back, getting used to the British weather again (his plane landed at Heathrow in a snow storm!) and getting stuck in.  He'll be back writing on the blog as well, so expect to hear from him soon.