#1. It’s “I Before E”
And It’s Alignment Before Empowerment

The empowerment of patients has the potential to improve treatment adherence and healthcare in general but only if that empowerment is accomplished in the context of a therapeutic alliance with the goals and values of patients, clinicians, and the system though which care is provided in alignment.

The empowerment of patients without such alignment endangers rather than enhances healthcare on both the individual and systemic level.

For example, members of a jazz band may discover hitherto untapped power and evocativeness from a composition when they are empowered to improvise and take responsibility for their performance rather than play as automatons. On the other hand, fourth graders in a beginners orchestra may have implicitly agreed to play from the same sheet music and follow the lead of the same conductor, but it requires only a few moments of observation to grasp that such nascent musicians, however desirous they may be to please the audience or how enthusiastically they approach the task at hand, lack the maturity of temperament and conceptual capacity necessary to operate independently without an ensuing cacophony.

Senge’s warning, although written about business administration, is equally valid in this situation,

• Patient-MD Alignment
• Microsoft Pushing Healthcare Alignment, Too
• No-Nonsense Approach
• The Top Ten Patient Compliance Points: #5
• AlignMap Overview