The Trusted Clinician: An Alternative Approach to Worksite Health Promotion?
Publication: The Art of Health Promotion. January/February 2008; 1-7
Authors: Raymond Fabius, MD and Sharon Glave Frazee, PhD
Objective:
The trusted clinician-patient relationship is the key to improving behaviors that lead to better health outcomes. Americans consistently rank their relationship with their physician as one of the most important and they depend upon their clinician for health information. The importance of this relationship is validated by research showing the value of physicians in helping patients make important health changes across all three levels of preventative health: primary, secondary and tertiary. The value of the trusted clinician at the workplace to promote health and improve the productivity of the workforce as well as promoting quality healthcare is discussed.
Commentary:
Health promotion requires the engagement and compliance of health consumers. Numerous studies cited in the article demonstrate the remarkable influence trusted clinicians can have on their patient population. Those organizations responsible for health promotion will have better results incorporating the trusted clinician into their process. Recent efforts to reward healthy behaviors extrinsically with money or lower co-payments instead of investing in the care delivered by trusted clinician is misguided. Those resources would be better spent rewarding primary care providers to educate and coach their patients to better health.