Hippocrates said: “It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” The trick, however, is getting to know the patient and engaging them in their care. While patient-centered care has long been at the core of ACC’s mission to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health, it has been only in the last several years that the College has been able to develop programs and tools aimed at facilitating this engagement between patients and their cardiovascular care providers.

It’s been exciting to see CardioSmart evolve from a website to an ecosystem that includes everything from community events to mobile apps to television programming for physician offices. Similarly, the majority, if not all, of the College’s new quality improvement efforts have some component of patient engagement in recognition of the fact that you can’t truly improve care without involving patients and their families or other care providers.

In these and other areas, we have made great strides in finding new ways to engage patients in their heart health. Yet opportunities abound for us to do more. This week the College will be hosting representatives from industry and like-mind organizations for a special “Summit” focused on how we can continue to make headway in combatting heart disease. Over the next two weeks the ACC in Touch Blog will feature commentary from ACC leaders and even a patient or two about the importance of engagement and the opportunities for collaboration.  I encourage everyone to read these posts and ENGAGE! Your thoughts and experiences with patient engagement, as well as your suggestions on how the College can help you get to know the patient sitting before you, will help us as we plan for the future.

Engagement begins now!

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