What’s New In Patient Compliance
AlignMap, EnrichMap, and The Scourge of Treatment Noncompliance
Many returning readers know I maintain another blog and web site, AlignMap.com, which focuses on patient compliance and adherence to treatment.
For those who are unaware of the significance of patient compliance, I’ve included the following excerpts from AlignMap.com:
Noncompliance with treatment is a healthcare catastrophe.
Because many otherwise effective treatment plans are inadequately implemented or are not implemented at all,1
- Millions of unnecessary hospital admissions and thousands of preventable deaths (in the US alone) take place every year
- Innumerable patients suffer needlessly prolonged, severe, or relapsed diseases
- Healthcare dollars go to waste at an annual rate of $100 - $300 billion (in the US), losses in workplace productivity take an even higher toll, and patients, their families, and their communities endure profound financial, social, and psychological damage
- Cascading misinformation, mistrust, and inefficiencies impair medical research, corrode the morale of clinicians, and imperil the healthcare system itself
Some readers may also know that, in my pre-AlignMap, pre-Heck of a Guy life, three colleagues and I formed a group called EnrichMap to develop a system for grouping patients according to their behavioral patterns pertinent to compliance. That information would allow customized, group-specific strategies to minimize unnecessary treatment failures caused by noncompliance. That decrease in treatment failures would, in turn, reduce the consequent morbidity and mortality, research confoundments, delays, and financial waste.
Humanity in general and healthcare in particular would be enhanced, the American economy would be saved, and apropos of this new Age of Aquarius, peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars. Oh, and the four of us would be rewarded with appreciation, a sense of accomplishment, and vast sums of money.
And, indeed, we were able to construct what has become the Emap Profile, a model that, based on an individual’s responses to a brief (20-25 items) questionnaire, divides the adult, cognitively-intact population into six segments, each with different implications for patient compliance:
- Sage and Satisfied
- Security Seeking
- Self Starting
- Uncertain and Concerned
- Spontaneous and Impulsive
- Vigilant and Suspicious
The problem was that we were unable to find a practical means of testing the tool.2 Consequently, we set the project aside. I began the AlignMap web site and blog, in fact, to provide an outlet for my continuing interest in treatment adherence.3
It now appears likely that my partners and I will be able to work with one of the companies involved in clinical trials to find out if the Emap Profile does what we think it does - make meaningful distinctions between how patients respond to treatment proposals.
And thus is reincarnation accomplished in the business world.
One manifestation of EnrichMap’s revitalization is the EnrichMap.com web site, which just came online. EnrichMap.com offers, naturally, more information about the Emap Profile, including the opportunity for a visitor to determine which of the six groups best describes his or her pattern of responses to healthcare instructions.
So, if you are interested in the impact of healthcare noncompliance, if you want to take the survey to find out where you fit in the Emap Profile, or if you’re just curious about how I’ve spent my so-called free time lately, check out the ~ EnrichMap web site ~
Footnotes
- The scope & effect of noncompliance is elaborated at
~Noncompliance Fact & Fiction~ ~back~ - ”Practical means of testing the tool” translates into “a clinically and statistically valid method for testing our hypothesis that we could afford out of pocket.” ~back~
- Yes, if I had known we would be resuscitating EnrichMap, I might have chosen a name for that site other than “AlignMap,” which will inevitably be confused with “EnrichMap.” If it helps, AlignMap covers patient compliance in general; EnrichMap deals with a specific solution, identifying subtypes of patients with respect to adherence and customizing enhancements for those groups ~back~
Congratulations to all concerned on the revival of this work :-). I remain thoroughly convinced that the Emap Profile can be a powerful tool in a variety of arenas, including but not limited to healthcare compliance.
Comment by MindSpin — March 12, 2008 @ 3:55 pm