Advancing Patient-Centered Care to the Next Level

The Institute of Medicine’s 2001 report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, called for health care systems that:

• Respect patients’ values, preferences and expressed needs
• Coordinate and integrate care across boundaries of the system
• Provide the information, communication, and education that people need and want
• Guarantee physical comfort, emotional support, and the involvement of family and friends (pp. 52-53)

IHI recognizes that while these characteristics of care are widely accepted, they are not always well implemented. Today’s complex, fragmented systems put great pressure on providers and center care on the needs of the system itself, not the needs of patients. Working together, we can do better, and in doing so, improve patient well-being while reducing unwanted care.

Is your organization striving to become more patient-centered? A new Improvement Guide has best practices and tools to help.

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Patient- and Family-Centered Care Organizational Self-Assessment Tool

This tool allows organizations to understand the range and breadth of elements under patient- and family-centered care and to assess where they are against the leading edge of practice.

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Partnering with Patients and Families to Design a Patient- and Family-Centered Health Care System: A Roadmap for the Future

This paper provides background information to facilitate the development of an action plan to ensure that sustained, meaningful partnerships with patients and families are in place in hospitals, health systems, community clinics, and more.

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