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Carol Ostrow | Dec 4, 2016

Care coaching begins to catch on

Trust, open communication and translation go a long way toward fostering better outcomes for underserved patients, a recent study suggests, with the advent of primary care coaches bridging gaps in health education and encouraging positive patient participation.

 

At the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the institution’s Department of Family and Community Medicine has undertaken a study to determine how health coaches benefit patients. The department's vice-chair of research, Dr. David Thom, revealed that previous studies concluded that coaching improved outcomes in areas like diabetes.

 

The current study is funded by the Washington, D.C.- based Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), dedicated to fundraising for patient care studies and working in tandem with scientists. Because poorer patients are more vulnerable to missing opportunities for improvement, they stand to benefit substantially from a relationship with an individual assigned to help them with key decisions regarding their treatment.

 

Using data gathered from focus groups and interviews, study authors organized a coaching model based on seven different components, including shared characteristics between coach and patient, availability, trust, education, personal support, decision-making support and patient-clinician bridging.

 

Shared traits can include social or cultural similarities, which help patients feel more at ease; accessibility provides reassurance of time to spend communicating and clarifying information; and education enables patients to make informed decisions, all of which combine to foster an atmosphere of trust and support between patient and coach.

 

Qualitative results thus far indicate that patients regard the health coach as a bridge rather than a barrier to improved care, Thom said, who suggested that it is indeed feasible to construct a team-based model for primary care using coaching.

 

“The specifics of how to do this best will vary between practice settings and reimbursement environments,” he said.

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