Despite advances in medicine and massive increases in spending in America over the last several decades, there hasn’t been a corresponding improvement in health outcomes. One major reason for this is that there’s still a crucial element missing from the design of health care systems and services: consideration for the role of human behavior.

Just looking at the decisions and actions that both providers and patients encounter highlights the importance of designing health care to work for behavior. Providers must constantly assimilate abundant information and use their attention, memory, and judgment to make countless decisions in fast-paced settings each day; they must build trust with patients and repeatedly communicate vital information to people from different backgrounds who may be disoriented; and they must do all this in a taxing work environment requiring long hours, coordination across teams, and significant red tape. Meanwhile patients must understand and remember their treatments, form new habits, take the right drugs at the right time, avoid the wrong foods, persist through new struggles and pains, and more. Improving patient health and health care delivery depends not only on quality medicine, treatments, and advancements, but also on the decisions these two groups make and whether they follow through.

Behavioral insights have already impacted how health care is delivered and improved lives. One prominent example is the catheter checklist, developed by Dr. Peter Pronovost. Inspired by pilot safety procedures reserved for emergencies, Dr. Pronovost simplified the guidelines providers use for patients who require central venous catheters down to an easy-to-follow checklist to prevent infection. Getting the most critical things right every time has proven to be better for patient health than physicians trying, and failing, to remember and follow dozens of minute rules.

Read the full article about how embedding behavioral designs can help improve health care by Owen Footer  at ideas42.