Writing in his blog “health matters” on 11 May 2012 he expresses the need to invest in patient health literacy to help people look after their own health which would, “as a consequence, add value to the NHS” by saving resources in the health system.

Whilst Mr Corrigan has no doubt that encouraging patients to look after their health is a good thing for them and the NHS, his point is that money has to be spent on interventions to educate people and so a concrete economic case therefore is needed.

In order to demonstrate the economic case for the self care intervention, the project has to show it has secured savings that would otherwise have been spent on care in the NHS. For example, self care intervention has avoided a visit to A&E or having to provide an emergency bed. These savings demonstrate value to the NHS and the money that would have otherwise been spent on the emergency bed will actually have to be saved according to Mr Corrigan, in order to provide the economic case and prove the intervention worked.

In his blog he says “in this way investment in a group of patients who would otherwise cost a lot of resource can demonstrate how it will save the NHS real resource”.

For the full article go to: http://www.pauldcorrigan.com/Blog/?p=1299

Quotes from the blog:

“Increasing the capacity of people who live chaotic lives to manage their own health is an enormous prize both for themselves and for the NHS as a whole.”

“Co-production of health care is a good thing for patients. It empowers them and gives them more influence over their health care.”

“Co-production of health care creates economic value in health care which will eliminate expensive costs that the NHS cannot afford.”

Due to extremely high demand, for the launch event invitation, Men’s Health Forum (MHF) have decided to expand venue capacity to accommodate as many requests as possible, so please feel free to bring a plus one, just make sure he or she also register here.

Please mark your calendars on May 23^rd, Wednesday 9AM, the brand new MHF online shop will be live and you will be able to download for FREE YOLO/Men’s Health Week 2012 resources- posters and leaflets, OR take advantage of the several great promotional offers in support of YOLO campaign launch and order printed resources- posters, leaflets, and manuals at substantial discount or FREE. To avoid disappointment and beat the crowd, please make sure you place your order as soon as possible.

In the mean time, MHF value your support very much and would love to hear about the local events you are planning, the primary purpose of the new campaign website is to promote the local events around England and Wales, so please fill the attachment and send it back so MHF can promote on its new website, which should be live next week.

Read more here…

The study ‘Developing best practice for fungal specimen submission – fungal audit of general practice’ can be downloaded from the following link:
http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/newsarticle-content/-/article_display_list/13744489/gps-urged-to-encourage-self-care-for-fungal-infections

1. The importance of behavioural change and new tools to facilitate behavioural change
2. Patients: nudging patient behaviour

Click here to download the report in full

Key outputs from the report include:

• Health care costs are becoming unsustainable, in large part due to a chronic disease epidemic fuelled by unhealthy lifestyles, aging populations and increasing standards of living. To bring costs under control and improve health outcomes, patients and other stakeholders of the health care system will need to change their behaviour.
• To enable these behavioural changes, the epicentre of the health care system is shifting from the two places in which health care has traditionally been produced, delivered, consumed and paid for — the hospital and the doctor’s office — to a third place: the patient.
• Patients – who have grown increasingly comfortable with empowering technologies (e.g. smartphone apps, monitors, social media) are taking a more active role in managing their health and are demanding a different model.
• Getting people to adopt healthy behaviours represents a tremendous economic opportunity for life science companies and health care systems, but this has been extremely difficult despite patients’ best intentions.
• Behavioural economics demonstrates that the reason people fail to make behavioural changes is that they have predictable biases that affect decision making – leveraging the science of behavioural economics to understand human biases allows companies to construct incentives and create products/services that are far more likely to succeed.

If the benefits of self-care are to be communicated amongst the patient population, the means of communication is crucial. Talking to patients in their own terms and avoiding the use of jargon can greatly improve patient experience, and help empower patients to make healthy decisions with confidence. Dr Michael Dixon, chair of NHS Alliance, described this as a need to ‘de-professionalise’ and ‘hand power to our patients [to] enable them to self-care’.

‘De-professionalising’ means, for healthcare professionals, practising plain speaking and encouraging the provision of simple, manageable information and advice for patients. An over-professionalised consultation, riddled with incomprehensible medical terms, for instance, stands to alienate and confuse a patient – something that does not encourage empowered, informed self-care. Nor does it facilitate shared decision making.

Shared decision making and empowering patients is something that featured highly in Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley’s speech at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust on 7 December. Lansley talked about the importance of professionals and patients working together, as well as educating patients on symptoms to look out for. He said: “We need to empower patients, their doctors and nurses to work together to get the best possible care. We need patients to be fully engaged in the decision making process. And we will help people to make the right decision when they are unsure whether to see their doctor or not. By helping people to recognise symptoms, we can help improve early diagnosis for things like cancer or dementia or other conditions. At the same time, we can help reduce the nearly 60 million visits to a general practice that don’t necessarily need a GP”.

Empowering patients is a question of understanding their rights and responsibilities, and encouraging them to do the same. Importantly, though, it is also a matter of engaging patients with their own healthcare by attempting to look at the healthcare experience from their perspective. Well-communicated, clear, simple advice – coupled with an awareness of the role the patient can play in the management of his/her own health – are the key to making self-care an easy choice.

Read the full speech here.

Shared care is key, because according to Professor Nigel Sparrow, chair of the Professional Development Board of the RCGP, it has the potential to ‘increase patient confidence and develop more effective use of primary care’.

It is hoped that increasing patient confidence will improve uptake of self-care among patients. But to facilitate this, there is a recognised need to increase the confidence of health professionals too – in their ability to promote self-care.

As a means of addressing this need the RCGP has launched an e-learning self-care course for health professionals entitled ‘Self Care for Minor Ailments’. The course has been designed by RCGP to aid GPs in developing consultation skills that empower patients to self-care.

Available for health professionals to access via the RCGP website, the course was funded by NHS Northwest. Susan Summers, assistant director of quality assurance and self-care at NHS North West Strategic Health Authority, explains the Authority’s decision to support the course:

‘If we are to halt the rise and prevalence of long term conditions, focus on prevention and upstream activity, including minor ailments, is critical – self-care is absolutely the catalyst for this, and this is why NHS North West felt it so important to fund the RCGP’s new online module. We are proud to have been involved and are sure the course will further the reach of self-care.’

There’s no doubt that courses like this will help ‘further the reach’ of self-care – by giving health professionals the support they need to best promote it among their patient populations.