Healthcare teams are held to higher standards when it comes to trustworthiness than most other professionals. That’s because the consequences of poor care can be devastating to our health and well-being. Advocacy is a key element of building patient trust.
A healthcare team that advocates for you is one you can count on. But unfortunately, this tends to be harder to find for female patients. With 31% of women (versus 19% of men) saying they had to prove chronic pain before getting treatment, establishing a care team that listens and advocates for you is key to your health outcomes. But what exactly does advocacy look like in healthcare?
To better learn how to trust your healthcare team and overcome doctor avoidance, you have to understand the importance of advocacy in the healthcare field. Fortunately, data analytics are improving the ability of patients and care teams alike to understand and improve the quality of care. As a result, communication and support are easier to achieve in the course of medical treatment.
The Importance Of Advocacy In Healthcare
Everyone wants to feel as if they are heard and understood as they receive necessary medical treatments. There is little in our lives that affect us more than medical issues. From the financial elements to the physical ones, every patient should feel as if they can trust their medical team to work towards the patient’s best interest. Without this trust, healthcare becomes a more terrifying and inaccessible system.
That’s where advocacy comes in. The role of advocacy in nursing consists of empathy and active listening on the part of a care team. The results are doctors and nurses that are more capable of personalizing treatments to every patient.
In fact, in the field of nursing, advocacy has come to be an expected and integral part of the job. This work consists of mediating, championing social justice, and safeguarding patient data to support safe and secure care solutions. The benefits of patient advocacy in healthcare include the following:
- Improved public health
- Enhanced patient-doctor collaborative opportunities
- Better care
- Empowered patients
- Greater access to care
Facing rising healthcare costs and limited availability, trust and advocacy often get placed on the back burner for patients in need. However, these virtues are necessary for individuals to receive the care they are owed.
The sad reality is that healthcare resources are often too limited to allow medical professionals to advocate for patients in the ways they might like. For female patients, the problem is compounded by a dearth of clinical research data. Fortunately, however, data analytics is emerging as a powerful means for improving the trustworthiness of medical processes and empowering greater patient advocacy. Here’s what this means for you.
How Data Analytics Is Creating Better Health Decisions
These days, technological innovations such as cloud data networks, blockchain, or the fifth generation of wireless connectivity (5G) are empowering better data analysis and security in the medical field. What does this mean for patients? In short, it means you can better trust your care providers.
That’s because data analytics can be used to make all kinds of better health decisions. Here are a few examples:
1. Passing on cost savings to the patient.
First, data analytics is enhancing the trustworthiness of healthcare for the average patient by producing cost savings. By harnessing the power of data, care professionals are better able to track and maintain the use of resources and services to optimize conditions for financial success. As a result, savings can be passed on to the patient for greater care accessibility. Health executives that use data predictive analytics estimated cost savings of 15% over five years, according to Appnovation.
2. Optimizing services.
Secondly, data analytics is essential in optimizing every aspect of treating a patient. From administrative tasks to treatment plans, the more data we have regarding all kinds of conditions, symptoms, demographics, and more, the better we can identify pain points and correct challenges. In improving care for women, these improvements are especially important as a means of catching up on a dangerous gender gap in the medical field. Whether this data comes from patient feedback or digital analysis, providers that use it can be trusted to have more information for offering optimized care.
3. Improving cybersecurity.
Finally, data analytics supports higher levels of security across data storage systems. Whether your care provider uses a cloud network, private servers, or even a blockchain ledger system, data analytics combined with these tools offers greater oversight and actionability when it comes to digital threats. Because modern artificial intelligence tools model thousands of instances of data access to more accurately flag instances of fraud, this means a safer data network for patients.
But these technologies are only effective if they are integrated and utilized with care and empathy. Healthcare teams that put patients front and centre implement advancing technology such as data analytics to produce optimal results for every person they serve. Asking your provider about the technologies they employ is just one of the many ways you can tell if your healthcare team is advocating for you.
How To Tell Your Healthcare Team Is Advocating For You
As you look for healthcare you can trust, keep a few important tips in mind. Choosing a new doctor can be difficult. But by finding a medical team that advocates in your best interest, you can be confident that your health is in good hands.
That said, how can you recognize if the healthcare team you’ve assembled truly has your best interests at heart? Spotting advocacy in healthcare requires knowing what to look for. Here are some metrics by which you can judge advocacy in the course of your own care:
- Your medical data is protected in an encrypted system that requires multi-factor authentication at a minimum for patient log-in.
- Your healthcare information is provided to you in a comprehensive and transparent portal.
- Your care providers listen, record, and remember what you tell them.
- Your medical expenses are explained, accurate, and competitive.
- Your care team stops to ensure all your questions are answered and treatment plans are clarified.
These items are a few baseline tips to help you make sure you’re receiving quality care. With a team that you trust to advocate for you, much of the stress of medical treatment dissipates. Understand the importance of advocacy in your own health care, then be aware of how providers support your well-being with data analytics.
These strategies can help you build a healthcare team that you can trust. In turn, enjoy a healthier, less stressful lifestyle.
