Sustainable Healthcare means a Shift to Fully Embracing Health Coaching

By Dr Ollie Hart

It was heart warming to see so much enthusiasm for health coaching at the UKIHCA ‘wall to wall’ health coaching breakout day. It was part of the larger Integrative Personalised Medicine 3 day Conference. It gathered together over 150 people focused on progressing health coaching in the NHS, workplaces and wider society. 

A particular highlight was hearing Lord James Bethell lend his enthusiastic support to the practice of health coaching. He said “Its hard to see how we can make the NHS sustainable and effective without fully embracing health coaching”. He posted a very supportive video blog on linked in featuring Peak Health Coaching (PHC) Director Ollie. 

PHC associate Deepak Ravindran took to the stage to elaborate on the new science behind coaching approaches in chronic pain, and Ollie was also part of a panel discussing evidence for Health Coaching. Together with Adam Davies from Pure Unity, they presented data from health coach led pain services across the country, including 2500 patients. The average improvement in pain self efficacy questionnaire was 39% (which is huge!). 

Also on this panel was GP Dr Emma Richardson demonstrating that health coaching approaches in obesity matched outcomes achieved by GLP1 injections (without the side effects). Dr Caroline Gibson and Paul Rudd shared their robust service evaluation of over 160 health coaching patient journeys. They used the EQ5D outcome measure which allows direct comparison with other health treatments. They showed cost per QUALY  (Quality adjusted life year) to be £600. This shows exceptional value for money, compared with a typical NICE threshold of £20,000.