Patient and Family Centered Care Thesis
PATIENT-CENTERED CARE IMPROVEMENT GUIDE
I. INTRODUCTION
“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo
PATIENT-CENTERED CARE: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME
O
rganizing the delivery of health care around the needs of the patient may seem like a simple and obvious approach. In a system as complex as health care, however, little is simple. In fact, thirty years ago when the idea of “patient-centered care” first emerged as a return to the holistic roots of health care, it was swiftly dismissed by all but the most philosophically progressive providers as trivial, superficial, or unrealistic. Its defining characteristics of partnering with patients and families, of welcoming―even encouraging―their involvement, and of personalizing care to preserve patients’ normal routines as much as possible, were widely seen as a threat to the conventions of health care where providers are the experts, family are visitors, and patients are body parts to be fixed. Indeed, for decades, the provision of consumer-focused health care information, opportunities for loved ones’ involvement in patient care, a healing physical environment, food, spirituality, and so forth have largely been considered expendable when compared to the critical and far more pressing demands of quality and patient safety―not to mention maintaining a healthy operating margin. How times have changed. This once radical concept has undeniably been pushed into the mainstream, in part by the Picker Institute’s introduction of its scientific approach to identifying and understanding patients’ varied needs and by the expansion of the Planetree membership network, comprised of health care organizations across North America and abroad all implementing a patient-centered approach to care. The Institute of Medicine’s 2001 seminal report Crossing the Quality of Chasm identified patient-centeredness as an essential foundation for quality and patient safety―versus the conventional
I. INTRODUCTION
“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo
PATIENT-CENTERED CARE: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME
O
rganizing the delivery of health care around the needs of the patient may seem like a simple and obvious approach. In a system as complex as health care, however, little is simple. In fact, thirty years ago when the idea of “patient-centered care” first emerged as a return to the holistic roots of health care, it was swiftly dismissed by all but the most philosophically progressive providers as trivial, superficial, or unrealistic. Its defining characteristics of partnering with patients and families, of welcoming―even encouraging―their involvement, and of personalizing care to preserve patients’ normal routines as much as possible, were widely seen as a threat to the conventions of health care where providers are the experts, family are visitors, and patients are body parts to be fixed. Indeed, for decades, the provision of consumer-focused health care information, opportunities for loved ones’ involvement in patient care, a healing physical environment, food, spirituality, and so forth have largely been considered expendable when compared to the critical and far more pressing demands of quality and patient safety―not to mention maintaining a healthy operating margin. How times have changed. This once radical concept has undeniably been pushed into the mainstream, in part by the Picker Institute’s introduction of its scientific approach to identifying and understanding patients’ varied needs and by the expansion of the Planetree membership network, comprised of health care organizations across North America and abroad all implementing a patient-centered approach to care. The Institute of Medicine’s 2001 seminal report Crossing the Quality of Chasm identified patient-centeredness as an essential foundation for quality and patient safety―versus the conventional