A qualitative study on measuring patient‐centered care: Perspectives from clinician‐scientists and quality improvement experts

Tags

Top Highlights

• Patient‐centered care (PCC) benefits patients, health‐care providers, and health‐care systems by providing delivery of care that addresses patient values and needs while improving provider experiences, and by decreasing health‐care expenditure.

• Patient‐centered care is an increasingly well‐recognized and highly sought‐after model of care, reaching the height of its prominence in a report published by the Institute of Medicine, which listed PCC as one of the six most important dimensions of high‐quality care1, 2 and defined PCC as care that is “respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensures that patient values guide all clinical decisions.”1, 3

• Previous research has found that PCC has the potential to improve health outcomes4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and benefits health‐care systems and health‐care providers.

• Practice that goes against principles of PCC, such as failure to consider the patient's wishes in decisions related to care, has been associated with accusations of malpractice.15, 16

• When a provider fails to consider a patient's needs and values, there is a risk for miscommunication. Additionally, health‐care systems benefit from PCC in decreasing patients' length of stay, minimizing the need for unnecessary testing and procedures, and decreasing the cost per case, ultimately improving the efficiency of care.5, 9, 14