Patient Engagement: The Key to Redesign the Exchange Between the Demand and Supply for Healthcare in the Era of Active Ageing.

Abstract

The last decades' changes in the epidemiological trends of chronic disease - also due to the ageing population - and the increased length and quality of life among the majority of Western population have introduced important changes in the organization and management of the healthcare systems. Consequently, health systems throughout the world are searching for new and effective ways to make their services more responsive to new patients and the public's health needs and demands. The idea of patient engagement - borrowed from the marketing conceptualization of consumer engagement - moves from the assumption that making patients/clients co-producers of their health can enhance their satisfaction with the healthcare system as well as their responsibility in both care and prevention by improving clinical outcomes and reducing health delivery costs. To make people aware of their health services options by supporting them in the decision-making process and to engage them in enacting preventive and healthy behaviors is vital for achieving successful health outcomes and preventing waste of resources. In this chapter, we outline a model (PHE model) that explains the patients' subjective experience with their health management process and the levers that may enact the passage from one phase of the process to the other. Based on this conceptual model of patient engagement will be proposed a tool kit of priority actions that may sustain the patient in its process of engagement.