By Allison Verdoorn
Designer researcher at Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation
Patients with multiple chronic conditions often experience not only the burden of their physical illness but also the burden of treatment caused by the work associated with the interventions prescribed to them by their medical team. While the work a patient has to do increases, the illness that necessitated the treatment typically reduces a patient’s capacity to do that additional work.
The Minimally Disruptive Medicine model seeks to reduce the burden the medical community places on patients in the delivery of care. With interventions that range from reducing the amount of paperwork a patient is asked to filled out to consolidating prescription pickup and refill times to coordinating appointments of families and spouses, the Minimally Disruptive Medicine model identifies the elements within the health care system that add more workload onto patients and works to eliminate those tasks from their experience.
Care plans are widely recognized as a need across many areas, both inpatient, outpatient and out among community health services. Our vision for a care plan is that it is more than just a document, but a shared reality that is created together with the patient. This speaks not only to the need to create a space for shared decision making among patients, their families, clinic care team, and community resources, but also to display this information in a way that is readily accessible to all involved.
The Community Health Transformation platform at the Center for Innovation is connecting with Minimally Disruptive Medicine and Shared Care Plan teams at Mayo Clinic to understand how dashboard tools can help the clinical team, patients, caregivers, and their social support networks to visualize patient goals, levels of health care workload and capacity, and to assist in decision making and interventions.
