Aligned, integrated patient education improves care quality, builds trust, aligns teams and patients, and supports clinical efficiency. Discover why healthcare leaders are making it a strategic priority.
Clinical information and patient understanding are disconnected
Patients often leave healthcare settings with limited understanding of their condition or next steps. They commonly misunderstand or forget 40-80% of information provided provided by physicians and a survey showed 80% of patients have follow-up questions after a health encounter. Despite the expertise of care teams and the availability of information, gaps in comprehension remain a leading contributor to poor adherence, readmissions, and dissatisfaction.
One key driver of this disconnect is the lack of standardization between clinical decision-making and patient education. While clinicians rely on evidence-based tools to inform treatment plans, the educational materials handed to patients frequently come from entirely different sources—sometimes outdated or overly generic.
For healthcare leaders focused on quality, safety, and experience, this fragmentation is more than a communications issue—it’s a care delivery challenge.
Patient education has long been a checkbox in care delivery. But today’s healthcare leaders are rethinking its role—not as an afterthought, but as an integral part of evidence-based care. When educational content is directly connected to the clinical guidance used by care teams, it does more than inform patients. It builds trust, reinforces clinical decisions, and contributes to better outcomes.
From fragmented messaging to better care experiences
Healthcare organizations spend significant time and resources to help clinicians use the most current available evidence-based guidance. Yet patient-facing materials are often disconnected—written in general terms, pulled from outdated sources, or lacking clinical context. Additionally, 77% of patients look for health and wellness content that has been clinician-reviewed, despite the prolific amount of information available online.
This disconnect matters. When patients receive mixed information, it undermines trust in care plans. Worse, it reinforces barriers to health literacy and shared decision-making, and could contribute to adverse outcomes. By contrast, when patient education is synchronized with the same tools clinicians use to make decisions and embedded in electronic health records (EHR), it creates a unified voice and reference source. Everyone—from the CNO to the bedside nurse—is part of the same conversation.
The impact of aligned patient education on engagement and outcomes
Studies show that informed patients are more engaged in their care and more likely to adhere to treatment plans. However, not all information is created equal. To be effective, patient education must be:
- Clinically aligned: Reflect the same evidence clinicians rely on and aligned in recommendations.
- Accessible and understandable: Written in plain language and clear imagery, with cultural and linguistic sensitivity, available in different mediums.
- Timely and relevant: Delivered at the right moment in the patient journey within the care team workflow and through patient portals.
When this trifecta is achieved, and when education aligns with clinical decisions, patients become active participants in their own care, not just recipients of it. The result is better outcomes: improved safety, reduced readmissions, and measurable gains in quality metrics.
Better education improves clinician workflows
It’s not just patients who benefit. Nurses and care teams often bear the responsibility of explaining diagnoses and treatment plans—sometimes repeatedly. When education materials mirror the clinical guidance they already trust, clinicians can confidently hand off content, knowing it reinforces their recommendations.
For CNOs and nurse educators, this alignment also eases onboarding and standardizes education practices across sites. It reduces variability, streamlines staffing efforts, and supports consistent, high-quality care delivery—critical in large health systems and Magnet-recognized organizations alike.
Patient education is a strategic imperative for healthcare executives
For executives focused on quality, equity, and digital transformation, aligned patient education is a strategic lever that supports key initiatives across the organization. These include:
- Health equity: When content is written for different reading levels, represents diverse audiences, and is available in multiple languages, it helps close literacy gaps and empowers underserved populations.
- Value-based care: Informed patients are more likely to avoid preventable complications and utilize care appropriately.
- Patient experience: Clear, consistent medical and drug information supports better HCAHPS scores and Net Promoter Scores (NPS).
- Digital initiatives: Patient education can be delivered in different mediums and on-demand in online portals to support care at home and save on paper costs.
At a time when trust in institutions and information is fragile, clear and credible communication can be a differentiator. It also empowers patients to play an active role in their healthcare, providing them with consistent guidance and actions. Patient education that reflects the same sources clinicians use sends a powerful signal: "We’re united in your care."
The next evolution in patient education
As health systems invest in digital front doors, AI-enabled decision support, and integrated care pathways, patient education must evolve too. It’s no longer just a handout at discharge—it’s a vital part of care delivery that deserves the same strategic focus as clinical innovation.
Analyzing how, when, and where patient education is delivered will take a systematic approach from health leaders, especially when aligning with the same rigor care teams expect from their clinical guidance.
For UpToDate® Enterprise Edition customers with Epic® EHRs, this alignment has become much easier. Our patient education library—now featuring over 7,500 digital leaflets in 19 languages— has been widely expanded and customers can now seamlessly access award-winning content directly within their Epic EHR and MyChart® patient portal, bringing clinical decision support and patient-facing content into a single, unified experience. This capability empowers care teams to efficiently educate patients in the clinic and at home with the same evidence-based guidance used at the point of care, helping them become better partners in their health journey.
While this functionality is currently live in Epic, we’re actively expanding to other EHR platforms and ambient workflows so that no matter the setting, patients receive timely, trusted information as part of their care journey. Learn more about this integration.
