Patient engagement leads us to better, safer, less expensive, and more flexible ways for managing healthcare's complex tasks. It's common sense, right? If you're engaged in your own care and personally accountable to yourself and others, you're more likely to invest the time and energy to achieve health and well-being in your life.
It's tempting to believe this simple truth is the only truth to the matter. But as we know, healthcare is more complicated that. The New England Journal of Medicine in May announced survey results which show that only 9% of healthcare executives report high levels of engagement across more than 3/4 of their patient population. The authors suggest that we haven't yet discovered optimal ways of achieving high rates of sustained patient engagement – which is itself startling, considering how much interest there is in this area.
