Health & Medicine - Posted by Simon Jenkins-Leeds on Thursday, February 25, 2010 13:39 - 4 Comments 
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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Communication is the best medicine
E-mail, face-to-face conversations between health professionals, networks establishing links between medical practices, or a joint responsibility for drawing up treatment regimes and monitoring their effectiveness all show that where the collaboration is most systematic and effective, patients really benefit. “In a way this is all common sense,” says Robbie Foy, “but now we really have the evidence to back it up.”
LEEDS (UK)—Efforts to improve communication between patients, family doctors, and specialists can have a crucial impact on patients—in some instances working as effectively as drugs.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Bobbie Foy, professor of primary care at the University of Leeds, studied two sets of patients: one group suffering from depression and a second being treated for diabetes. Details are reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
In both these long-term conditions, patients typically see both family doctors and specialists, with their care under one often overlapping their treatment from the other.
“What we wanted to see was whether having arrangements in place to improve communication and teamwork between these health professionals would make any difference to their outcomes,” Foy says.
“In short, would those suffering depression recover; would blood sugar levels be better controlled in people with diabetes?
“The results were impressive. In cases where family doctors and specialists were collaborating, blood sugar was much better controlled in people with diabetes—which is a significant step in avoiding the complications associated with the condition.
“In the case of patients with depression, the improvement in outcomes was about the same as you would get from treating their depression with drugs.”
Foy says the models for collaboration vary from place to place, and can take many forms.
E-mail, face-to-face conversations between health professionals, networks establishing links between medical practices, or a joint responsibility for drawing up treatment regimes and monitoring their effectiveness all show that where the collaboration is most systematic and effective, patients really benefit.
“In a way this is all common sense,” says Foy, “but now we really have the evidence to back it up.”
University of Leeds news: www.leeds.ac.uk/news
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4 Comments
Hi, I´m science writer and would like to make an article in spanish for my site of news for spanich media. Could you send me the PDF of Meta-analysis: Effect of Interactive Communication Between Collaborating Primary Care Physicians and Specialists
Thank you for your reply.
Ricardo Gómez Vecchio
Sympathique blog
Just Browsing…
Then I happened upon this site when searching on the internet last week…
Very interesting indeed. And of course look at the Missouri VA medical setup. They had been spending close to $45K a year for each individual patient and the outcomes were less than desirable.
So they had the bright idea to send their M.D.’s out into the field to visit the patients. What do you know, the expense of providing the service dropped to $17K per patient and the patient outcomes actually became much better.
Some of the doctors explained it very well. One mentioned his quadriplegic patient. He said that because he was seeing the patient more often, he was able to head off potential issues that would have warranted hospitalization.
So in other words, house calls made a difference. Imagine that.