Achieving patient priorities: an alternative to patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for promoting patient-centred care

Abstract

For the past two decades, patient-centredness has served as one of six acknowledged dimensions of healthcare quality.1 Initially, healthcare institutions described patient centredness superficially—clean waiting rooms, hotel-like bed and board, access to innovative medical technology—and measured it with crude satisfaction scales. The concept of patient-centred care evolved into a model attuned to the patient experience of care, defined by the interactions between patients and providers and the care environment.2 This patient experience model of patient-centred care has deep normative roots around principles of the patient as the locus of control and a demand for individualisation and customisation of care based on the patient rather than clinician.3 Empirically, patient experience is associated with health outcomes when defined and measured in a timely manner as a specific care experience or interaction between a patient and a healthcare provider.4 The importance of honouring the patient experience is now a widely appreciated construct and a common measure of healthcare quality with a deep evidence base.5 The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems Survey and Press Ganey patient satisfaction measures are ubiquitous measures of quality defining patient experiences of care. The effort to transform healthcare systems from clinician to patient centred is not complete. Honouring, measuring and ameliorating patients’ experiences of care is necessary but not sufficient and represents only the first stop on the journey to patient-centred care.6 The second stop is one that nests the locus of control with patients and caregivers. Patients’ control over healthcare decisions is useful only when transparency exists in all aspects of care: evidence, costs, processes, outcomes and errors.3 Unfortunately, claims that patients should have control and transparent understanding of all aspects of care have largely been ignored due to institutional inertia, …

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