Activating patients to manage their health can improve outcomes, study says

The United Kingdom could advance patient centred care by assessing how far people can manage their own health, analysts have said.

Better health outcomes and new ways of allocating NHS resources could stem from adopting a concept favoured in the United States known as patient activation, the researchers said.

Helen Gilburt, a King’s Fund health policy fellow and coauthor of a study on patient activation launched at the fund1 on 16 May, said, “Many people don’t understand the role they can play in managing their health. Patient activation highlights a whole new level of health inequalities we haven’t reached until now.”

The concept of patient activation describes the knowledge, skills, and confidence a person has in …