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About Us
We believe that solutions to the business problem of rising health care costs are within reach. While we welcome top-down policy reform, we see the power of a yet-untapped solution--the bottom-up effort of empowering individual patients and family caregivers. We believe that true health care transformation will happen when doctors and patients engage in a new collaborative partnership. To achieve different outcomes, health care providers and health care consumers will work together in different ways.
Our Medical Bridges physician-developed products and services coach clients to partner with their doctors more effectively. Individuals learn what to say and what to do so they get the quality health care they deserve. These patient advocacy skills benefit both the patient and the person managing the care of a sick loved one.
We believe that patients can be an important part of the solution. It will involve skills that help individuals act like smart health care consumers who make smart choices. An investment in these consumer tools will benefit your business.
Inviting health care consumers to become part of the health care solution and say YES to health.
How Medical Bridges solutions are different
You may have programs in place to help you manage your rising health care costs. Medical Bridges fills in several critical gaps.
1. Many health care reform efforts target the doctor side of the doctor-patient relationship. Our Medical Bridges solutions focus on the patient side of the equation.
2. Many programs tell patients what to do. Our Medical Bridges solutions show patients how to do it.
3. Increasing numbers of Americans face the health consequences as they assume the largely ignored challenges of caring for aging parents and other loved ones. Our Medical Bridges solutions help family caregivers manage their health and serve as more effective patient advocates for their parents.
Focus on the patient side of the doctor-patient relationship
Our Medical Bridges solutions empower health care consumers.
You've read, for example, that 100,000 hospitalized patients die each year from preventable medical errors. That's like a jumbo jet falling from the sky every day. Consider what happens to your business when your own hospitalized employee is given the wrong medication or gets an infection from the doctor's unwashed hands, or discovers the surgeon operated on the wrong side of the body. These medical mistakes translate to higher health care costs and prolonged work absences. Even if the employee is at the bedside of a hospitalized parent, medical errors prolong the hospital course and the time the employee is away from the job.
You might be involved in efforts that leverage your purchasing power to influence doctors and hospitals to change the way they deliver health care. You can offer hospitals strong incentive to install computerized order-entry systems, for example, thought to reduce the numbers of medication mistakes. Our Medical Bridges solution identifies steps that your employees themselves can take. We coach employees to ask three critical questions so they avoid the most common preventable medical errors.
Many health care reform efforts target the doctor side of the doctor-patient relationship. Our Medical Bridges solutions focus on the patient side of the equation.
The problem: Costs associated with medication errors in hospitalized patient
Provider-based solutions: Identify hospitals that have computerized order-entry systems
Our Medical Bridges solution: Coach patients to ask the nurse, ” What’s the name of that medicine and what is it for?”
The problem: Preventable infections that prolong hospital stays and increase sick leave
Provider-based solution: Identify hospitals with low infection rates
Our Medical Bridges solution: Coach patients to ask each doctor and nurse to wash their hands before touching the patient. This is easier said than done. What would you say if your mother’s surgeon started to remove her surgical dressing before washing his hands?
The problem: Your employee’s performance is impaired because she suffers with troublesome symptoms rather than talk with the doctor about this embarrassing medical problem.
Provider-based solution: It doesn't exist. Doctors can only address problems they know about.
Our Medical Bridges solution: Coach employees to talk with the doctor about embarrassing medical topics.
Action trumps access to information
Patients have easy access to important do-it-yourself information that helps them manage their health. It's no secret that smart health care consumers make a list of questions before they go to the doctor appointment or get second medical opinions or ask the doctor about treatment options.
Yet, few do it.
Information alone is not enough to motivate patients to act like smart health care consumers. Everyone knows, for example, that smoking is dangerous. Smokes usually stop when they understand why they smoke, get insight into why it's so hard to stop and develop a plan to overcome these obstacles.
Medical choices are emotional choices. Fear, embarrassment and guilt drive many health-related behaviors. That’s why our Medical Bridges solutions address the elephant in the exam room. That's why our clients get the actual words to say at the doctor's office.
The problem: The wrong diagnosis that leads to the wrong treatment, a prolonged course of treatment and additional expense.
The information solution: Tell employees to get second medical opinions
Our Medical Bridges solution: Identify the real reasons so few patients get second medical opinions, offer a different perspective and walk through the specific steps.
The problem: Your employee does not take his asthma medication and winds up in the ER with an asthma attack
The information solution: Tell the employee to take his medicine as prescribed
Our Medical Bridges solution: Identify the real reasons that lead large numbers of patients to ignore their doctor’s advice, and coach employees to tell their doctors about unacceptable side effects or cost concerns.
The problem: Your employee’s performance is impaired because she suffers with troublesome symptoms rather than talk with the doctor about this embarrassing medical problem.
The information solution: Encourage your employee to see the doctor.
Our Medical Bridges solution: Identify the real reasons people avoid the doctor and offer strategies to manage fear, guilt and embarrassment.
Our Philosophy
The doctor-patient relationship is the foundation of the health care system. Any health care intervention, whether it’s a lab test or an operation of an x-ray study, is initiated after a doctor and a patient discuss the options.
The traditional "Father Knows Best" doctor-patient relationship is costly and dangerous for both you and your employees. Medical paternalism contributes to delays in diagnosis, preventable medical errors and poor patient compliance. This means higher medical bills, more absenteeism and the insidious costs of presenteeism.
Successful patients engage in a collaborative partnership with their physicians.
Seemingly trivial problems are huge barriers to quality, cost-effective health care delivery. On the surface patients' concerns about offending their doctors, for example, appears to be a minor issue; however, this is the main reason patients cite when explaining why they don’t seek second medical opinions. Only 1 in 5 patients seek the second medical opinions that result in a new diagnosis in as many as 1 in 3 cases. Think of your cost savings when your employees avoid the wrong medical treatment because they started out with the wrong diagnosis.
Seemingly trivial changes in the way patients work with their doctors can yield huge benefits. Three simple questions posed by coached hospitalized patients could help avoid preventable medical errors that prolong hospital stays, add medical expense and take lives.
Health care reform requires behavioral changes, and most efforts are targeted at changes in the way doctors practice medicine or hospitals treat their patients. Efforts invested in supporting changes in patients' health-related behaviors reflect true innovation. Yes, you can direct your employees to hospitals that have hand-washing policies. And you can also coach your employees to ask doctors and nurses to wash their hands.
Patients' choices and behaviors influence overall health care costs. This why, for better or for worse, drug companies invest billions of dollars in direct-to-consumer advertising. Your employees' willingness to invest in health promotion ( i.e. a healthy diet, regular exercise and stress management) and follow doctors’ orders directly correlate with your health care costs.
Poor patient compliance increases health care costs. Up to half of patients do not take medication as prescribed, make recommended lifestyle changes or follow up as instructed by their doctors. Poor compliance translates to increased health care costs—and business costs-- as healthy patients place themselves at increased risk for disease, chronic illnesses are exacerbated and recovery from acute illness is prolonged.
Patients want helpful information to help them make practical day-to-day health-related choices. The new family in town looking for a pediatrician. The woman deciding where to go for treatment of her breast cancer. The postal employee deciding whether to treat his low back pain with bed rest or an operation . More information about the patients experience and cost will become available to support smart choices.
Information alone is not enough to support behavior change. Most patients know what they should do, but few actually do it.
Health care is a vehicle to arrive at a destination of optimal employee health. Healthy employees are the building blocks to healthy businesses and healthy business profits.
There is hope. Health care solutions are within reach today.
Medical Bridges is not:
- An insurance company selling you a policy
- A group of case managers or treating doctors
- A referral service to doctors or hospitals
Here's what you get with Medical Bridges products and services:
- Tools that help health care consumers get quality, patient-centered health care.
- Skills that help patients take the fastest, most direct route to optimal health whether they're dealing with a cold or cancer
- A resource to support those caring for aging parents, sick spouses or ailing friends.
Let us help you say yes to health.
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