From buzzword to bedside: Tools for integrating lifestyle medicine into high-pressure clinical workflows
Industry Buzz
Integrating lifestyle medicine assessment tools into the EHR … is crucial to successfully supporting our patients during their lifestyle change journey.
—Meagan L. Grega, MD
Lifestyle medicine is becoming more popular, and experts say the field has the potential to address the root causes of chronic diseases.
Properly integrating the principles of lifestyle medicine in high-demand clinical environments isn’t as challenging an endeavor as it may appear, experts argue.
“Lifestyle medicine is really kind of a team sport; it’s not just physicians—we also have lifestyle medicine–certified nurses, exercise physiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, dieticians, you name it… Spreading the workload is good [given] that team-based care aspect,” Michelle Hauser, MD, tells MDLinx. Dr. Hauser is the president-elect of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and the Obesity Medicine Director of the Medical Weight Loss Program in the Stanford Lifestyle and Weight Management Center at Stanford University.
Lifestyle medicine and EHRs
Earlier this year, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine announced the integration of the first set of lifestyle medicine assessment tools into one of the leading electronic health record (EHR) software systems. []
Among the tools included in the EHR are a clinical survey that gathers details on patients’ lifestyle behaviors and their readiness for change; a dietary questionnaire; and a tool for assessing patients’ physical activity levels.
Experts say this is a crucial step toward integrating lifestyle medicine principles into hospital systems and specialty practices.
“Integrating lifestyle medicine assessment tools into the EHR, along with being able to track lifestyle habits such as physical activity, dietary choices, sleep quality, substance use, mental health metrics, and a patient’s sense of connection to others, is crucial to successfully supporting our patients during their lifestyle change journey,” Meagan L. Grega, MD, a director of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, tells MDLinx.
She continues: “In medicine, if we don’t measure it, we typically don’t manage it. If we didn’t measure blood pressure at every visit, we would be much less likely to notice when a patient had hypertension and less able to determine if our therapeutic interventions are effective once we began treating it. The same is true for health behavior change. Integrating lifestyle metrics and patient-created SMART goals into the EHR allows for ongoing monitoring of progress and personalized feedback with each clinical encounter.”
Integrating lifestyle medicine into practice
With many clinical settings already being stretched by heavy patient loads and limited time, Dr. Grega says one way to incorporate lifestyle medicine principles without disrupting workflows is to connect teams through a referral program.
“Lifestyle medicine service lines can connect interdisciplinary team members such as physicians, dietitians, exercise physiologists, nurses, sleep medicine [specialists], risky substance use treatment [specialists], and behavioral health specialists to create a comprehensive lifestyle medicine referral program," she adds.
If time constraints are a factor, varying appointment models may also be appropriate in some clinical settings.
“Additional strategies include giving patients homework in between visits and more frequent individual follow-up appointments with their clinician,” Dr. Grega says.
Dr. Hauser notes that integrating lifestyle medicine principles into hospital systems, specialist practices, and other clinical settings doesn’t necessarily require complex changes; it can simply involve identifying opportunities to align care with lifestyle medicine’s goals.
Improving hospital food services is just one example.
“We can improve our food service in most hospitals and healthcare systems around the country. If we’re serving things that make people sicker and directly counteract what we're recommending, then that's a missed opportunity,” Dr. Hauser says.
Related: An argument for getting personal with your patients