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The importance of patient activation and interest
in the Patient Activation Measure™ (PAM™) and related products
is seen across the healthcare sector, in support of Disease
Management, Drug Therapy Compliance,
Wellness Programs, Physician
Interactions, and Underwriting.
Disease Management
More than 130 million Americans are managing
a disease, most resulting in multiple chronic conditions, with an
economic impact that approaches $1.5 trillion. Up to
70 percent of this expense is unwarranted and the result of
patient behavior. The PAM™ provides disease management firms
with powerful insight into the self-management competencies
of the patients they serve, allowing coaching interactions
and other programs to become better tailored to the needs
of a particular individual. The use of the PAM™ also reduces the
reliance on claims data to identify coaching opportunities,
and offers a powerful predictive model to identify utilization
trends based upon activation level measurement.
Drug Therapy Compliance
Pharmaceutical firms and pharmacy benefit managers
have a significant stake in patient activation, particularly
in the ability to increase medication compliance. Non-compliance
is estimated to affect 50 to 70 percent of all prescriptions,
cost $100 billion per year and account for 10 percent of all
hospitalizations. Studies show that 40% to 60% of patients
could not correctly report what their physicians expected
of them just minutes after they were provided with the information
on their drug treatment regiments. The PAM™ identifies patients
at risk for non-compliance and enables the tailoring of care to increase
compliance, along with an array of other self-management behaviors
critical to the efficacy of drug therapies.
Wellness Programs
Employers are increasingly looking to wellness
programs to prevent disease, improve employee health, and help control rampant healthcare spending. According to Forrester
Research, 74 percent of employers surveyed offer or plan to offer
preventive health programs, while 41 percent offer or plan to offer
on-site wellness programs. With PAM™ insights, both the programs
themselves, and the manner in which programs are presented
to employees, can be better tailored to achieve higher employee
participation, program follow-through, and overall effectiveness
of the curriculum.
Physician Interactions
Interest in PAM™ has been strong among physicians
and care delivery organizations. Clinical settings are staffed
lean, patient demand is high, and the typical patient-provider
encounter lasts less than seven minutes. The use of PAM™ –
administered in less than 5 minutes as the patient waits for
an appointment, or as appointment pre-work, allows providers
to tailor patient interactions to achieve maximum benefit
in a short period of time. Moreover, it allows clinicians
to deliver educational resources and support outside the patient
encounter that are appropriate to an individual’s self-management
competencies.
Underwriting
Most predictive techniques used in underwriting
– historical claims data, fluid testing, body weight analysis,
etc., are retrospective and have proved largely ineffective
at identifying lifestyle-based diseases in the early and pre-disease
stages. Lifestyle-based analytics, such as the insights provided
by the PAM™, offer a powerful tool to augment the underwriting
process, and to identify coaching opportunities months, and
perhaps years ahead of the availability of claims data or
other clinical markers.
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