Your patients may come to your office with information from an on-line program we told them about in the May/June 2007 edition of the HNE member newsletter, Member Matters. It’s called
How’s Your Health? A fact sheet about the program is printed below, but the portion that you are likely to see in your office is a printout of the results of the individualized online health questionnaire. Its intent is to educate patients and generate dialogue between patients and caregivers. The information provided on
How's Your Health is designed to support, not replace the relationship that exists between a patient and his/her physician. We’ve told members that they should use
How's Your Health as a guide for their health and medical care, and urged them to discuss any questions about the information with their doctor, nurse or other health care worker.
What is How's Your Health?
A family of web-based tools to improve health and health care.
The basic How Your Health tool (in English or Spanish) serves people aged 2-99 by:
- Helping them to think about their health as they complete an age and gender specific survey
- Giving them readings directed at the problems and concerns they identify during the survey
- Allowing them to have a personal health record
It also serves health care professionals by:
- Allowing them to see the action plan of their patients
- Allowing them to have practice specific-data on issues such as access, efficiency, overall quality of care
- Allowing them to compare to national performance benchmarks
Also available without charge are How's Your Health tools for neonatal intensive care, hospitalized patients, or very sick or frail patients. Tools for Problem-solving help people feel more confident about their ability to manage and control all types of problems such as a chronic disease, anxiety, pain, excessive weight, etc.
What is the Relative Advantage of How's Your Health Compared to Personal Health Assessment and Health Risk Tools?
How's Your Health tools offer more than these assessment tools. How's Your Health tools are also public access.
How's Your Health tools provide complete health assessment and feedback and self-management support (as described above). How's Your Health tools are also behaviorally sophisticated and effective because they are based on years of peer-reviewed and published research. They do not just focus on “risk.”
Are How's Your Health Tools Compatible with Other Accepted Standards?
Yes, for patient-reported health status, How's Your Health contains measures that have been adopted by the World Organization of Primary Care. Validated against the SF-36.
For HEDIS and NCQA clinical measures, the patient-reported measures coincide with many of these measures, such as blood sugar, lipid and blood pressure control. How's Your Health developers serve on the “patient-centered” measures subcommittee of the NCQA.
For risk assessment and personal health assessment standards, How's Your Health developers are working with the CDC.
For “cross-platform” electronic data transmission: The personal health record produced by How's Your Health is based on the emerging Continuity of Care Record (CCR) national standard. How's Your Health automatically populates the DocSite registry without requiring any additional input from a physician’s office staff.
How Complex are How's Your Health Tools?
They are designed and tested for Ease-of-Use for different settings and populations.
Field research on the components of How's Your Health tools began in the late 1980s and continues to this day so that the tools are understandable, easy-to-use and effective. For example, based on field studies, the large-print How's Your Care tool for hospitalized patients is designed for use on a touch pad web-tablet. Another example, a simplified version of “problem-solving therapy” described in the psychiatric and psychology literature was tested in a large controlled trial before being made available as the How's Your Health “Problem-Solving” tool. One last example, customized inquiry by and feedback to clinical staff can be made automatically.
Can I Try How's Your Health?
Yes. Just go to www.How's Your Health.org
How Can I Learn What Others Are Doing with How's Your Health?
Updates
Except for the correction of errors that is done immediately, updates of the questions and information are performed annually. John Wasson MD, Professor of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School oversees all updates. The latest update was in January, 2007. For persons aged 13 or older, the sources for updates are:
- The Journal of the American Medical Association
- The New England Journal of Medicine
- The British Medical Journal
- The ACP Journal Club (This provides reviews of current publications).
- The Journal of the American Geriatric Society
- Clinical Evidence from the British Medical Journal (This provides comprehensive reviews for common conditions and preventive recommendations).
