Difference between revisions of "Patient Stories"

Revision as of 15:55, 18 August 2016

To truly understand managing health, we need to hear first hand from patients to relate, emphathize and learn how to improve.

Addressing Non-Medical Determinants

• 78-year-old businessman with pain needed emotional needs addressed first (5/17/14)
• Mr. Jones had congestive heart failure, COPD, and a barrage of other chronic health problems. A visit to his home provided insight into why he was going to the ER each week (5/21/15)
• 39-year-old woman that is nearly blind and unable to walk more than a step or two, struggles to raise three sons while dealing with a daunting array of health conditions from diabetes to pain from bulging spinal disks. A non medical health worker offers to help. (3/9/16)
• A Physician tells a story of how social determinants drive patient outcomes in two men in their late 30s that live across the street from one another, both in good health with no family history of major illness (8/7/16)

Behavior

• A physician frustrated by his limits describes the tale of two patients. A 61-year-old man with elevated blood sugar. 52-year-old man with an elevated red blood count caused by smoking, sleep apnea from obesity, early lung disease and two cardiac stents. The 61-year old lost weight and lowered his blod sugar. The 52-year-old didn't make any lifestyle changes and health deteriorated. (7/15/16)

Caregivers

• When a family caregiver becomes injured, she learns the difficulties—and costs—of caring for herself and her chronically ill husband at the same time. (9/2014)
• A son must decide between caring for his elderly mother or being able to retire one day

End of Life

• A patient dying of cancer was denied home treatment that would have improved her quality of life over her last few days and saved tens of thousands of dollars. (2/11/13)
• A frail, 94-year old women with with advanced Alzheimer’s has hip fracture surgery during her dying days due to poor communications (3/10/13)
• A hospital CEO learns that the standard of care isn't always appropriate when her 94 mother sustained a fall

Health Insurance Issues

• A patient suffering from an infected artificial shoulder couldn't afford intravenous antibiotics three times a day for six weeks in home. Medicare spent an unnecessary $30,000 on hospitalization and care rather than reimbursing for home care. (2/23/13)
• Medicare would only pay for an 84-year-old man's infusion therapy at a nursing home ($15,000) rather than at his home ($1,200). (2/23/14)
• A man suffers for a week in agony with kidney stones because of insurance access issues to physicians and services (12/11/15)
• A young professional woman a few years out of graduate school in late twenties with a good job and health insurance unable to manintain her health due to cost and coverage. (6/29/16)

High-Need, High-Cost Patients

• Rebecca Bryson has 10 different medical conditions and depends on 13 health care providers. Her life improved when a program funded a Clinical Care Specialist and the creation of a Shared Care Plan.
• Forty-year-old Jeremie Seals was assigned a care manager and a regular physician that helped reduced his 15 ER visits and 11 hospitals stays to 4 ER visits and 4 hospitals stays the following year. (7/10/13)
• Virginia Hunt's story illustrates the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of our healthcare system that addresses conditions and often lacks capability to treat the overall patient. (3/3/13)

Living With Pain

• The frustrations of 70 year old woman going from a vibrant lifestyle to be consumed by pain with no solutions other than suffering and addicting opioids. (7/3/16)

Medical Decisions - Quality of Life vs. Aggressive Interventions

• 70-year-old male with deteriorating congestive heart failure. Costly, aggressive route, could have caused more harm than good, comprising quality of life. (9/20/14)
• Vibrant 68-year-old woman from Haiti. She was always impeccably dressed, loved to talk, and had an incredibly infectious laugh. While the condition was cured, she was not. (6/6/16)

Patient Goals

• A doctor discovers an important question patients should be asked. “What are their goals?” (3/9/15)
• Patients become people through their social history (8/26/15)

Primary Care Physicians - Managing Health

• Patient went to Urgent Care rather than Primary Care Physician that knows her, costing almost $10,000 that was unnecessary (3/14/14)