Empowering Providers to Empower Patients (EPEP)
The goal of the Empowering Providers to Empower Patients (EPEP) initiative is to improve physician-patient communication and shared decision-making and the role that patients, survivors, care partners, and healthcare professionals each play in that process.
Given that healthcare professionals typically have limited time to spend with their patients, particularly in the FQHC setting, they must find ways to save time while effectively and efficiently communicating with their patients. Healthcare professionals can facilitate shared decision making by listening to their patients’ concerns, actively asking about the patients’ goals for care, offering information/education in an easy to understand way, answer questions, and then letting the patient decide what they want to do. This initiative includes: