HealthPartners, an integrated provider and insurance healthcare organization serving Minnesota and Wisconsin, is creating a measure of patient well-being to encourage physician conversations with patients about their overall life satisfaction.
Measuring patients’ perceptions of the quality of their lives is an important barometer of future health, says Tom Kottke, MD, a cardiologist and senior clinical investigator at Health Partners. Even people whose health is good and are doing well financially can be unhappy or dissatisfied with aspects of their lives, and that can have medical consequences over time.
