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Watching the Headlines for Opportunities
A link on Twitter precipitated today’s post and idea for you. It contains a challenge, too! See below. The tweet linked to a news article: A second set of eyes cuts errors at HCMC. It tells about an initiative at Hennepin County Medical Center (Minneapolis) that cut the medication errors found in patients’ discharge paperwork from 92 percent – to zero. 0. Nada. No medication errors. Impressive. Now, if you or your patient-client happens to be discharged from Hennepin County Medical Center, that’s great news. But the article got me wondering – what about the other 99.999 percent of discharged hospital patients in the world? How many other hospitals have such horrendously dangerous medication error rates in the discharge paperwork given to their departing patients? And then an a-ha moment… what a great service for health and patient advocates to offer! A review of discharge instructions, including confirmation of any drugs that have been prescribed. Further – a great point to make in any talks given for marketing purposes, and a good point to raise with potential clients or their caregivers. When we pay attention to the headlines, we may find a wealth of ideas to use in our patient and health advocacy practices. The reason they are headlines to begin with is because the headline writer created them because they would be of interest to readers – and their readers are our potential clients or client influencers, too. So that’s the key – paying attention, then using those headlines that make sense in our work. We can speak about them, blog about them, print them or link to them so our target audiences are aware of them and know we provide solutions. Here are two more examples: Fierce Healthcare reports that the AMA is calling for hospitals to enhance care by improving their relationships with patient navigators. If you are getting ready to call on a hospital, or if you need permission to visit your client in a hospital, why not print this article and take it with you to show that the world of advocates and navigators is…