Jason Harris: Improving Patient Understanding and Promoting High-Value Care

Jason Harris, associate director of policy and programs at National Health Council, talks about promoting high-value, patient-centric care that reduces costs.

Transcript

How can patient navigators be better used to improve patient care, patient understanding, and decision making?

They got to use it more. Obviously, there’s a different climate right now but overall that position and being that central source to help folks navigate the situation, for lack of a better term, is something that is really necessary and it’s one thing at the National Health Council we have some of the leading patient health advocacy organizations in the country and many of those groups do the same thing in terms of navigating their constituents to certain areas. Overall, that holistic environment we need to bring people together to be giving that push rather than having them to pull it out.

How is the National Health Council working to promote high-value care, while reducing costs?

We are doing a number of things. We have a value initiative we have launched in the last 2 years or so and much of that is a round of trying to understand how patients define value so we can go and start to implement things that can and can’t tie back to that. As well, we have a rubric and a get ready checklist for patient organizations to help them understand how they can become engaged in the value conversation whether that be with a value assessment body or in value-based payment, talking about how they can get involved in different programs and how they can use their advocacy to the best means possible.