TAKING CHARGE 1

• Taking charge of your health and healthcare will probably require you to structure your thoughts and interactions with your healthcare team a little differently than in the past
• Some of this might seem childish or unnecessary. You can skip around the teachings and come back to things if you wish

Basics

1. What do you think about health and healthcare

have you ever put a few thoughts down on paper or given it some thought?

take a couple minutes to think about them

Here are a couple of things that I think of:
- health and healthcare are different
- health is you
- healthcare is the system - where you get healthcare
and what you do to care for yourself

2. How is your health or wellbeing - according to You?

Take the Well-being Self-Assessment from the University of Minnesota

- after opening the webpage, scroll down to begin the assessment
- it takes just a minute or two

3. You now have some clear thoughts about your health and what healthcare is:
Now, what are your expectations
- What are your expectations for your health?
some considerations:
- how old are you?
- have you or do you smoke?
- what are your current medical conditions, if any?

- What are your expectations of healthcare, of your doctor and healthcare team?

One healthcare study showed these 4 most frequent expectations by patients:

1. “Are you listening to me?”
2. “Can you explain to me how and why this is happening to me (my body or mind)?”
3. “Do you care about what I know about my own body and health concerns?”
4. “Can you explain to me how I can control my symptoms?”

For more discussion about the study and these 4 questions, click this link:

Take some time to consider YOUR expectations for your doctor and healthcare team, including receptionists and business people
- what is necessary for you to feel satisfied with your care?
- what is nice to have?
- what is small stuff? Don't sweat the small stuff.

These are going to change over time. And, some days are going to be better for you (and for the careteam) and some days are going to be frustrating:

Here's a video illustrating just one short interaction with the healthcare system

You have probably already experienced these kinds of conversations

What's a person supposed to do when bombarded with all these medical and insurance terms and demands?
- Do you know what all these acronyms mean? Do you need to know?
"PPO," "HMO," "POS."
- What if a doc or a nurse starts throwing out: "COPD," "HF," "C. diff," "IV push?"

You're going to have to ask questions
- There are few short or easily understood conversations in healthcare
- Give yourself time and try to give the healthcare team time

It is expected that the answers to some questions are going to be, "I don't know." The next words out of the care team's mouth should be, "But I will find out."