“Prius Effect” of Non-Judgmental Reporting

@forbodyandmind – Scott Henady, MSTCM
“Prius effect” changing behavior via non-judgmental reporting – quoting Dr. Ravi Iyer #pfconnect

The above was a tweet from Scott Henady who attended the panel that had Dr. Ravi Iyer at the Practice Fusion Connect user meeting. Dr. Iyer made some really interesting comments about Non-Judgmental reporting of data that helps to improve behavior. He called it the “Prius Effect.”

A search on Google seems to indicated there are a number of Prius Effects out there. However, the one that Dr. Iyer mentions is the display in the Prius that tells you how much gas mileage you’re getting and when you’re using the battery versus the gas in the car. It becomes quite clear as you accelerate, your miles per gallon goes down and so most people’s automatic response is to not push the gas pedal as much. I know I’ve had this exact experience. Just by being informed of the consequence of what I was doing, it changes behavior.

I believe it was Dr. Iyer also that talked about the signs on the side of the road that display how fast you’re driving down a street. It’s amazing how this little piece of non-judgmental information gets people to do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise (in this case push on the brake and slow down).

I think we could see a lot of benefit from these non-judgmental reporting of data in healthcare and EHR software as well. In fact, this is true for both a doctor who can provide better patient care with the right information warnings at the right time and also to patients who aren’t taking good care of their bodies. Just by providing good information to people, we can see behaviors improve. That’s a powerful concept that I think we need to see more of in EMR and EHR software and in healthcare.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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