The Patient Support Corps introduced the Breast Care Center at the University of California, San Francisco, in hopes of helping patients make more educated medical decisions, according to Harvard Business Review.
Here are six observations:
1. The Patient Support Corps offers training programs for student interns to be health coaches and patient advocates.
2. In their roles as coaches, the interns stand alongside patients during appointments, documenting the visits and ensuring physicians take note of all of the patients' questions.
3. The UCSF program emphasizes patient decision making, with coaches urging patients to take an active role in their treatment plans.
4. The coaches help patients analyze treatment options; set personal and medical goals; and consider benefits and drawbacks of certain treatments.
5. Within the program, patients approach medical decisions with the SCOPED process: "situation, choices, objectives, people, evaluation and decisions."
6. This patient navigator trend is present all over the country, with New York City-based Mount Sinai Hospital initiating its own internal medicine service program in 2010 and Green Bay, Wis.-based Bellin Health Systems launching a program for conditions, like cancer.
