Information Therapy

Deliver the Right Information at the Right Time

Healthwise wrote the book on information therapy (Ix^®), the practice of “prescribing” the right information to the right person at the right time. The concept has since been accepted across the health care world and recently became part of CMS “meaningful use” requirements for electronic medical records.

Give people the content they need to make better health decisions

In 2002, Healthwise founder Don Kemper and Healthwise senior vice president Molly Mettler co-wrote Information Therapy: Prescribed Information as a Reimbursable Medical Service, the book that introduced the concept of information therapy. In the book, they looked forward to the day when “every clinic visit, lab test, prescription drug, or treatment ... every hospital admission and every change in hospital-based physician orders” would result in patients getting just the information they needed to make sense of that clinical encounter. Don and Molly envisioned that every information prescription would be built in to the reimbursement formula for clinic and hospital visits. In the years since the book was published, many of the things they imagined have become a reality.

The future is now

The value of patient education as an important part of care is becoming more and more expected. Evidence of this can be found in the recent “meaningful use” requirements, which include these examples of Information Therapy:

• Care instructions as part of hospital discharge instructions
• Patient instructions as part of clinical summaries
• Patient-specific educational resources identified by EMR technology*
• Prevention services reminders to patients*
  * = optional category for Stage 1

Health care organizations are now using Healthwise content and technology for their own form of Information Therapy—automatically delivering targeted information to specific patients. Our “intelligent” coding allows automated matching of our health content and tools to the needs of a specific patient at a specific time in his or her care. Clinicians and health coaches can then quickly choose the right decision aid, patient instruction, action plan, interactive tool, or virtual coaching conversation for that moment of care. Staying within their normal workflow, clinicians can deliver just the right information to just the right patient at just the right time.

With Healthwise information therapy, delivering patient education becomes a standard of care you can count on. You give your clinicians the power to quickly find and prescribe up-to-date, trustworthy, and appropriate information and tools. And you save people the time and confusion of searching the Internet for information that’s easy to understand and act on.

Information therapy helps people make the most of every care encounter. And it helps you meet meaningful use requirements. We’ve got an Information Therapy solution for every setting. Let us know where you’re trying to go. We’ll help you get there.

Read the book at Health Education Library for People