Getting Started
Check Your Readiness
The level of readiness required depends of course on your objectives and the size of the task. However, the questions remain pretty much the same:
Responsibility
- Is someone in charge? The title doesn’t matter but the person should feel responsible for patient contacts, including follow-up.
- Building a team: gather experts for patient collaboration from inside or outside your organization.
Skills
- Does the person have the appropriate credibility and empathy to talk to patients and the authority to moderate the interactions with colleagues?
- Does he/she understand the complexity of patient interactions or does he/she have sufficient expert support?
Structure
- Why does the specific patient engagement activity fit into your company's objectives? Build it into your business plan!
- Make it a work process: what, who, when and how?
Commitment
- Involve the required management level: create sufficient buy-in for the envisaged patient engagement in your organisation.
- Put your money where your mouth is: get sufficient budget and capacity allocated for patient work.