Patient Activation Measure® (PAM®)

Understand patient and member activation so you can effectively target resources, personalize care and improve outcomes.

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What is PAM?

PAM is the gold standard in measuring individuals’ ability to manage their own health—their knowledge about medications and preventive health, their skills to maintain lifestyle changes and participate in care decisions, and their confidence in communicating with their doctor and following up.

PAM is more than just a questionnaire. It’s:

  • Predictive of future health risks, including hospitalizations, readmissions and emergency department utilization
  • Featured as a key variable in 800+ peer-reviewed studies
  • A consensus-based entity (CBE)-endorsed performance measure
  • Used by hundreds of healthcare organizations in 35+ states

Learn about PAM levels

PAM segments individuals into one of four activation levels, providing insight into health-related characteristics like attitudes, motivators and behaviors.

  • Level 1

    Overwhelmed, disengaged, not self-aware of behaviors, poor self-management

  • Level 2

    Recognizes they could and should do more, lacks confidence in ability to change behavior

  • Level 3

    Good self-management with room for improvement, goal-oriented, understands role

  • Level 4

    Strong problem-solving skills and self-awareness, highly confident, goal-oriented and resilient

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White paper

Patient activation is critical along the kidney care continuum

Kidney-care patients who are activated in their care have better health outcomes, including lower symptom burden, improved quality of life and higher rates of transplantation success. Read this white paper to learn how improving activation impacts these patients.

Read the white paper(this link opens in new window)

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