A positive change in activation for a person/patient can lead to positive changes in self-care behaviours which improves health and care outcomes and reduces demand on the healthcare system.
Activated staff are more innovative in the workplace and attentive to their own health and wellbeing for the benefit of themselves, their patients and colleagues.
People are living longer with more long term and chronic conditions many of which are preventable and levels of frailty are rising.
The National Association of Primary Care (NAPC) has been working in partnership with a number of systems to embed population health improvement to meet this challenge. Facilitating health creation, through activating the staff and people in those populations to gain hope, purpose and mastery over their lives. The result of this work is staff actively leading population health improvement and people in those populations are living healthier lives with improved resilience and wellbeing.
The evidence from our work on activation shows that as a persons’ activation increases, people experience:
A 1-point rise in patient activation is correlated to a saving of up to 5 GP contacts per patient per year and a 1-point rise in activation is correlated to primary and secondary care demand savings of £327 per patient per year.
Importantly we know from this work that someone who is able to take care of their health very well costs the NHS £981 less per year compared to somebody who is not able. We also know that activated staff start to experience more satisfaction and joy at work.
The ideal is to have a system where we can clearly see: