NOAH Board President and Director of Houston Methodist Center for Performing Arts Medicine, Todd Frazier participated in a panel discussing the the intersection of healthcare and the arts.
An excerpt:
Frazier’s center includes bringing music to patients in more ways than one. Some who have trouble with traditional speech therapy will respond to musical therapy, for instance. Psych patients requesting meds might find themselves instead soothed by Houston Methodist’s “music dome” (offering personalized playlists).
Both prompted by Stoyanoff and by his own accord, Frazier hit on the business side of the programs, as well. One key in justifying their longevity has been the contributions to patient satisfaction scores; keyword searches of patient comments have revealed dozens of comments about music, almost all of them positive, Frazier said. (Patient satisfaction impacts reimbursement levels from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.) He added that the music dome has nudged down costs on medication.
“Every time we opened a new music therapy position, it took about four to six months for the nurses, the physicians, the executives to say, ‘We have to guarantee this person is here every day. Because we need it, we see what it does, we’re able to down-scale support, and our length of stay is lowering,’” Frazier said.
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