Improving Cardiovascular Treatment Adherence Through Education, Engagement

Ensuring patients follow through with prescribed treatments for cardiovascular disease is just as important as the treatment itself; however, the typical provider-patient interaction can often feel very one-sided: medications are prescribed, tests are conducted, and so ends their conversation. Here, providers have a great opportunity to positively influence treatment outcomes, argued Jaime Murillo, MD, senior vice president and chief medical officer of medical affairs at UnitedHealth Group.

In this interview with The American Journal of Managed Care^®, Murillo encouraged providers to promote open communication with their patients and get them to ask questions. As he discussed, patient education, engagement, lasting communication, and taking advantage of digital tools can have a valuable impact on patient adherence and therefore patient outcomes.

Patient engagement and education, Murillo added, goes a long way in patient care because it allows them to

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

How can providers work with patients to ensure adherence to preventative measures for cardiovascular disease?

The work that providers do to ensure that patients follow the recommendations is a key part of the process. We sometimes see, or very often see, this transactional interaction between providers and patients, where it's just unidirectional. The provider gives a prescription, orders a test or a procedure, and that's the end of the story. There is an opportunity to do more than that by educating patients about their conditions, about the next steps, whether it's a prescription or whether it's a procedure or a test, the benefits of that intervention, the need to adhere to those regimens that are prescribed.

When you explain the "what" and the "why" is very important for them. But even going a step beyond that is the ability to convince the patient that they are part of their treatment, that there is a bidirectional approach, where the patients also confer with the providers about what they do and how they're doing it, getting some feedback. Nowadays, we also have the ability to connect people digitally. So having that going from that 1 transaction or interaction rather at the office, now we have the ability to connect with patients through technology, by monitoring their blood pressure signals or sugar or whatever it is that we can monitor. So that's a way also to see the effectiveness of the regimen and also to engage people in their own care.