Nearly one in three Americans lives with a chronic illness, including hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, or coronary artery disease. These diseases contribute to a large share of preventable suffering, complications, and health care costs in the U.S. Yet, there is currently no structured approach for primary care clinicians treating these conditions to talk with patients about what’s most important to them in their care. By better understanding what matters to patients, clinicians are able to deliver more holistic, whole-person care that could help slow disease progression or prevent complications.
For more than a decade, Ariadne Labs’ Serious Illness Care team has honed their expertise in designing structured communication approaches, creating scalable training solutions, and developing system-level interventions to enable more of these conversations for more patients with serious illness. In a new partnership with the Healing Works Foundation, the team aims to apply their learnings to improve care for chronic disease in primary care settings.
The team is currently working to develop a toolkit to guide conversations with patients and caregivers on what matters most in their health journey in order to identify the primary goals for health and wellbeing for each patient. Future phases of the work will focus on ensuring access to services and initiating changes to policy and payment structures to better support whole-person care.