Articles
What is Patient-centred care? (6)
- November 15, 2021
- Posted by: mghalandari
- Category: Definition Digital health
What is Person-centered Care?
Person-Centered Care organizes a system around the comprehensive needs of people rather than individual diseases. This involves engaging with individuals, their families, and their communities as equal partners in promoting and maintaining their health – including communication, trust, respect for preferences, as well as education and support for participating in health care decisions.
Person-centered Care is a critical component of achieving High-Quality Primary Health Care
Person-Centered Care involves engaging with people as equal partners in promoting and maintaining their health and assessing their experiences throughout the health system, including communication, trust, respect, and preferences.
Why it’s important
- Equity: To be empowered users of the health system, patients must be educated and supported to make informed decisions and actively participate in their own care.
- Patient and workforce satisfaction: Person-centeredness is an important function for improving system performance from the perspective of the user, catalyzing use of care. Person-centered Care also benefits job satisfaction among the health workforce.
- Improved health and clinical outcomes: Person-centered Care improves health and clinical outcomes and catalyzes more efficient and cost-effective services.
Key steps and considerations
- Empowering and engaging people and communities through public education and patient engagement, encouraging patients and families to be full participants in care.
- Strengthening governance and accountability through policies; leadership, development, and quality improvement training; reporting of standardized patient-centered measures; systematic feedback; and accreditation or certification requirements.
- Reorienting the model of care through design and delivery of efficient and effective services that are holistic, comprehensive, and sensitive to social and cultural needs and preferences.
- Coordinating services within and across sectors to leverage multisectoral and intersectoral partnerships and the integration of health providers in levels of care.
- Creating an enabling environment by bringing all stakeholders together to transform these strategies into an operational reality – including approaches such as incentives to promote supportive care and tools for facilitation of person-centered care
Key Elements of Person-Centered Care
Education and shared knowledge: Ensure patients support to make decisions and participate in their own care.
Involvement of family and friends: In decision-making and awareness and accommodation of their needs as caregivers.
Collaboration and team management: Leaders collaborate with patients and families in policy and program development, implementation evaluation; facility design; professional education; and delivery of care.
Sensitivity to non medical and spiritual dimensions of care: Providers are trained in how to incorporate these key elements of patient identity.
Respect for patient needs and preferences: Providers see patient and caregivers as the agents in their care decisions.
Free flow and accessibility of information: Use of practical tools to facilitate communication that supports person-centered care.
How do I assess my performance?
Completion of a Vital Signs Profile gives countries a holistic understanding of PHC strengths and weaknesses, a critical first step in the measurement for improvement pathway.
Vital Signs Profile: Use the information in your Vital Signs Profile to help determine relevant areas for improvement.
Planning for improvement in your context
While the specific considerations involved in planning and implementing strategies will depend on your context, you might consider.
Factors that impact strengthening governance and accountability:
- Policy formulation
- Performance evaluation + public reporting of standardized patient centered measures
- Mutual accountability across stakeholders
- People-centered incentive systems
Factors that impact empowering and engaging people and communities:
- Create training opportunities, skills development, and resources for facilitating involvement in health decisions
- Training and networks for community health workers
Goals & Outcomes
- Trust in the health care system through engaging with people as equal partners in their health
- Educated and supported patients who make informed decisions about their care
- Optimized value and clinical outcomes within the system by improving system performance from the perspective of the user
- Improved job satisfaction of the health workforce
- Greater efficiency and cost effectiveness in health service delivery
What are other indications that Person-Centered Care might be an appropriate area of focus?
- Poor quality and distrust: Patients feel that care is of poor quality and do not have established longitudinal relationships with care providers who know their care history
- Low patient engagement: A significant portion of thepopulation does not have theeducational support to makeinformed decisions about theircare
- Low or mismatched care seeking behavior: Patients are under-utilizing carealtogether or over-utilizinghigher levels of care for needsthat can be addressed in at thePHC level
- Lack of support for providers: Providers or organizations receive little to no incentives, trainings, or operation support for providing holistic quality care
- Lack of governance and accountability: No formal system for participatory approach to policy formulation, decision-making, and performance evaluation at all levels of the health system
- Poor health outcomes: The population experiences significant morbidity and mortality from preventive causes