See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/281610313

Patient-Centered Care: An Introduction to What It Is and How to Achieve It.

Technical Report · July 2009

CITATIONS READS
9 30,091

1 author:

Steven Lewis
Simon Fraser University
140 PUBLICATIONS 2,356 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Steven Lewis on 09 September 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Patient-Centered Care:
An Introduction to What It Is and How to Achieve It
A Discussion Paper for the
Saskatchewan Ministry of Health

Steven Lewis
Access Consulting Ltd.
Saskatoon SK

Final Version, July 29, 2009

Table of Contents
What Does Patient-Centered Care Mean?...................................................................... 1

A. The Fundamentals of PCC ........................................................................................ 2

B. What Patients Want ................................................................................................... 3

C. Provider Attributes That Promote PCC ...................................................................... 4

D. Governance and Management for PCC..................................................................... 5

E. Potential Policy Measures to Advance PCC .............................................................. 6

F. Potential PCC Indicators ............................................................................................ 7

G. Examples of PCC in Action ....................................................................................... 9

H. PCC and Primary Health Care................................................................................. 10

I. Getting to PCC .......................................................................................................... 11

What Does Patient-Centered Care Mean?
There have been many attempts to define the attributes of patient-centered care
(PCC) 1 . However, there are gray areas even in the most comprehensive of definitions.
The following is from NRC Picker, the company specializing in tracking patient experi-
ences:
1. Respect for patient’s values, preferences and expressed needs. This dimension
is best expressed through the phrase, “Through the Patient’s Eyes” and the book
of the same title, and leads to shared responsibility and decision-making.
2. Coordination and integration of care. This dimension addresses team medicine
and giving patients support as they move through different care settings for pre-
vention as well as treatment.
3. Information, communication and education. This includes advances in informa-
tion and social technologies that support patients and providers, as well as the
cultural shifts needed for healthy relationships.
4. Physical comfort. This dimension addresses individual, institutional and system
design (i.e. pain management, hospital design, and type and accessibility of ser-
vices).
5. Emotional support. Empathy and emotional well-being are as important as evi-
dence-based medicine in a holistic approach.
6. Involvement of family and friends. Care giving includes more than patients and
health professionals so that the larger community of caregivers are considered.
7. Transition and continuity. Delivery systems provide for caring hand-offs between
different providers and phases of care. 2
All of this seems praiseworthy, but what does it mean in practice? How would you know
if the care you received was truly patient-centered? How would providers know if they
were delivering patient-centered care? How would system managers know? What in-
dicators best reflect patient-centeredness? PCC is in some ways in the eye of the be-
holder. Providers might think they are delivering PCC but their patients might disagree.
Different aspects of PCC will be more relevant to some patients than others.
The purpose of this paper is to explore PCC in practical terms and propose some pos-
sible indicators and measures that would support transparent performance reporting on
its achievement. The aim is to make PCC more concrete, so that it is a living concept

1
Sidani S. Effects of patient-centered care on patient outcomes: an evaluation. Research and Theory
for Nursing Practice 2008;22(1):24-37 reviews the literature defining the concept and also extracts the
main features.
2
Institute for Alternative Futures on behalf of the Picker Institute. Patient-Centered Care 2015: Scenar-
ios, Vision, Goals, and Next Steps. Alexandria VA, 2004,
http://www.altfutures.com/pubs/Picker%20Final%20Report%20May%2014%202004.pdf
1
meaningful to those who receive, deliver, and organize care, and who make policy. Ul-
timately, PCC is as much about the culture of the system as specific approaches and
behaviours. The challenge is translating it into understandable, consistent and valid
terms and indicators.

A. The Fundamentals of PCC

A basic foundation of PCC is the notion of service. Many think of contemporary health
care as a combination of science and technology deployed by professionals to address
health problems. This is of course true, but PCC is based on a simpler premise: health
care is a service industry. This may sound like mere common sense, but if truly em-
braced and built into the health care system, it is a transformative idea. In important
ways health care is unlike commercial services like hair salons and hardware stores.
Sick people are not shoppers and their relationship with providers is qualitatively differ-
ent from their relationship with sales clerks. But one concept fundamental to the com-
mercial world is relevant to health care: the customer is always right.
Technically, of course, the customer is not always right – customers are just as fallible
as businesses. But a dissatisfied customer is a customer whose needs have not been
met, and the essential insight is to recognize this as a failure. Successful businesses
view an unsatisfied customer as evidence of their own failures. That ethos lies behind
no-questions-asked return policies, ironclad warranties, and personal communication to
resolve problems.
Businesses adopt this attitude because it is a key ingredient to their survival and suc-
cess. Publicly funded health care does not face the grim prospect of collapse due to the
loss of customers. It can, and does keep the customers it fails because there is no
other place to go. Most of the failures are not catastrophic (although many are and the
death and morbidity tolls are high). They are rather the failures of disrespect, inconven-
ience, poor communication, and fragmentation. Put most simply, the system has been
designed for the providers more than for the users of services, and it shows.
It is important to distinguish PCC from consumer-driven health care. The latter uses the
language of the market and increased patient control as a purchaser of services, and
more informed choice about where to receive care. PCC experts emphasize that while
the two concepts may overlap, PCC begins with the premise that people vary in their
capacity and inclination to engage in their own decision-making. Some are confident
and able to direct their own care, while others are less so. PCC makes no assumptions

2
about either the suitability of the market mechanism or the consumer orientation of pa-
tients 3 .

B. What Patients Want

The Change Foundation in Ontario has done a lot of work on PCC. A major literature
review confirmed that there is very little research that examines health care integration
from the patient perspective 4 . The Foundation conducted a series of focus groups to
get a better understanding of the patient experience 5 . Many implicit definitions of the
elements of PCC emerged, among which were:
1. Comprehensive care – all of their needs, not just some, should be ad-
dressed
2. Coordination of care – someone is in charge, there is someone to go to who
knows you and will help you navigate the system
3. Timeliness – they should get care when they need it and where a sequence
of services is required, the intervals should be short
4. Functioning e-health – provide information once, ensure that it is accessible
to those who need it, give patients access to the records and the opportu-
nity to add
5. Clear and reliable communication – listen, explain, clarify, ensure that the
provider team members are on the same page, consistency of messages,
access to phone or internet consultations
6. Convenience – minimize the need to go to different physical locations for
services; open access, same day scheduling; no unnecessary barriers or
steps to getting to the right provider
7. Respect – for their time, intelligence; for the validity of their stories; for their
feedback about quality and effectiveness; for their environment and family
caregiving partners

3
Silow-Carroll S, Alteras T, Stepnick L. Patient-centered care for underserved populations: definition
and best practices. Economic and Social Research Institute, January 2006. Prepared for the WK Kel-
logg Foundation. http://www.esresearch.org/documents_06/Overview.pdf
4
Spragins WA, Lorenzetti DL. Public Expectation and Patient Experience of Integration
of Health Care: A Literature Review. Toronto: The Change Foundation, 2008.
http://www.changefoundation.ca/litreviews.html
5
Who Is The Puzzle Maker? Patient/Caregiver Perspectives on Navigating Health Services in Ontario.
Toronto: The Change Foundation, 2008.
http://www.changefoundation.ca/docs/ChgFdn_Puzzle_Web.pdf
3
 8. Empathy and understanding – for their circumstances, fears, hopes, psy-
chological state
9. Time – to express needs and be heard effectively
10. Continuity and stability – to know and be known, minimize the number of
different care providers
11. Fairness – amount and timeliness of service commensurate with need.
Different initiatives and attributes are required to meet all of these needs. Some are
structural: how well the system is integrated, where services are located, the nature
and use of an EHR. Some are organizational: how are appointments made, how are
staff deployed, are there processes for pro-active rather than reactive communication.
And many are attitudinal and behavioural: whose needs come first, do providers listen,
do they treat patients as equals and partners, do they welcome feedback.

C. Provider Attributes That Promote PCC

Achieving genuine PCC requires a cultural adjustment. Provider attitudes and behav-
iours can accelerate or thwart PCC. Among the provider attributes essential to trans-
formation are:
1. Recognition that health care is an integrated service industry designed to re-
spond to people’s needs
2. A commitment to organizational effectiveness and collective responsibility for
the processes and outcomes of care, with special focus on handoffs, commu-
nications, and follow-up
3. Willingness to participate in non-hierarchical teams to ensure that patients get
comprehensive, well-integrated care from the most appropriate caregiver
4. Willingness to adopt an incentive structure that encourages spending ade-
quate time with patients with complex needs
5. Trust in and encouragement of those patients who want to be actively en-
gaged in the management of their own health
6. Commitment to organizing the system to provide timely care and adoption of
tools and techniques that prioritize patient access over provider convenience
7. Willingness to own the failures on any of the main PCC indicators and dimen-
sions and vigorously pursue remedies
8. Embrace of e-health and other technologies that expedite communication,
flow, and efficiency.
4
All of these attributes come down to attitude and primarily deal with the non-technical
aspects of their work. Many of the problems PCC aims to address involve fragmenta-
tion – the parts of the system don’t work together. Some fragmentation arises because
for over a century, professionals have put clinical autonomy at the centre of professional
identity. While the exercise of clinical judgment is fundamental to quality, absolute clini-
cal autonomy is anathema to an integrated system that delivers PCC. Because health
care is not a market good, there are no “natural” market forces to drive PCC, quality and
efficiency. Many values compete for priority status in any health care organization:
PCC, clinical autonomy, organizational loyalty, or any number of others. The core value
cannot be all of these, and if PCC is to be paramount, the others have to be modified
accordingly. Either the sun revolves around the earth, or the earth revolves around the
sun. Patients can orbit their providers, or providers can orbit their patients.

D. Governance and Management for PCC

Managers and governors are not directly involved in care but their mandates, values,
and policies create a framework that influences the relationship between patients and
providers. Managers deal more directly with providers while governors – especially
government – are responsible mainly to the public (who are all, at times, patients). And
while they may not exercise it fully, governments and managers have the power to
stand the system on its head if they are committed to it.
Both governors (including boards) and managers have to make PCC the top priority if it
is to be realized. They have two main roles: making policies, and holding the system
accountable. The policies have to support PCC, while accountability requires the
measurement of relevant aspects of the patient experience and a support system that
improves performance. This requires a focus on:
1. Indicators that capture patient-centeredness accurately and comprehensively
2. Health science education programs that build PCC into the core of their cur-
ricula and the formative apprenticeship experiences
3. Explicit goals and targets for achieving various elements of PCC
4. Regular patient surveys to monitor the evolution of PCC and identify
strengths and weaknesses
5. Regular provider surveys to monitor their attitudes, expectations, behaviours
6. Organizational changes that promote systems thinking, collective account-
ability, and team-based care

5
 7. E-health and other technologies that facilitate communication, efficiency, and
convenience
8. Investments in system re-engineering that advance PCC
9. Progressively more robust policies to spread PCC successes, e.g., manda-
tory open access scheduling, patient-driven e-health initiatives, transparent
reporting of PCC performance, etc.
10. A culture of PCC that refuses to tolerate behaviours that do not put patients
first
11. Incorporating important PCC criteria and measures into accreditation and
regulatory agency standards and processes.
These boil down to three main functions: defining the desired culture and expectations;
investing in the enabling change strategies; and mechanisms to ensure accountability.

E. Potential Policy Measures to Advance PCC

If it is true that policies are designed to achieve the outcomes we observe, then current
policies implicitly or explicitly entrench a provider-centered system and the absence of
innovative policies impedes the development of PCC. Based on the preceding analy-
ses, the following are examples of policies that could be pursued to promote PCC:
1. Make PCC performance a cornerstone of public reporting and accountability
and a major driver of incentive and innovation plans
2. Eliminate all financial incentives (elements of the fee-for-service agreement,
etc.) that act as barriers to using multiple methods to communicate with pa-
tients (e.g., telephone and e-mail communications, contact with various mem-
bers of the health care team)
3. Adopt primary health care funding mechanisms that encourage all providers
to focus their individual and collective efforts on high-needs populations and
complex problems
4. Eliminate all practices and collective agreement provisions that work against
developing stable and ongoing patient-caregiver relationships in community
and long term residential care – i.e., get rid of the revolving door syndrome
5. Set a timetable for the mandatory implementation of open access scheduling
and/or the achievement of same-day primary health care appointments
6. Accelerate the implementation of a patient-accessible, patient-friendly EHR
as the cornerstone of the health information system
6
 7. Eliminate all financial incentives that impede the development of team-based
care and an optimized division of labour that uses all of the knowledge and
skills of the workforce
8. Eliminate all financial disincentives to achieving greater degrees of self-
management among patients and their families and more active engagement
in their own health maintenance plans
9. Develop, publicize, and disseminate checklists and other tools for patients to
use in clinical encounters to ensure that their needs are being met
10. Work with educational institutions, accreditation bodies, regulatory agencies,
employers, and unions to incorporate PCC concepts and behaviours into
standards and expectations at all levels
11. Develop a legal and operational framework for partnerships between the for-
mal system and family and other caregivers, particularly in community and
long-term residential care
12. Audit PCC processes and outcomes to enhance the evidence base for refin-
ing policies, practices, and incentives.

F. Potential PCC Indicators

The following indicators are illustrative; to capture experiences in all sectors the ques-
tions would have to be tailored accordingly.
1. Time to 3rd next available appointment to see:
a. A primary care provider
b. A specialist
2. % of patients with access to an on-line EHR
a. By region
b. By practice
c. That allows them to enter and amend information
3. % of patients who can get all diagnostic work ordered by their primary care
doctor done the same day in the same location (excluding certain high-
technology procedures such as CT and MRI)
4. Periodic patient surveys that measure their experiences and perceptions of:
a. Respectfulness of communications

7
 b. Clarity of communications
c. Satisfaction with duration of appointments
d. Continuity of care
e. Convenience of services
f. Empathy and understanding
g. Responsiveness to desire to self-manage and otherwise be a partner
in care
h. Encouragement of independence and ownership of own health
i. Experiences in obtaining services from multiple providers and navigat-
ing the components of the system
5. Periodic provider surveys to measure:
a. Attitudes towards patients as engaged partners in their own health
b. Extent of e-health adoption and uses
c. Participation in teams
d. Participation in system organization and planning
e. Mechanisms by which they obtain patient feedback
f. Impact of funding and other incentives on behaviours, perceived ability
to deliver PCC, etc.
g. Organization of practice to provide after-hours service
6. Surveys or audits of boards and/or their organizations to track:
a. Policies in place that promote or deter PCC
b. Nature of information received on measures of PCC
c. Perceived barriers to higher PCC performance
d. Plans for enhancing PCC performance
7. Surveys or audits of health science education organizations to track:
a. How PCC is incorporated into the formal curriculum
b. How PCC is incorporated into the practicum experience
c. How PCC capacity is assessed in progress towards degrees/diplomas

8
G. Examples of PCC in Action
No jurisdiction can claim to have perfected PCC, but some have done some remarkable
things. We in Saskatchewan are increasingly familiar with two systems with a notable
PCC focus: Jonkoping County in Sweden and the South-Central Foundation in Alaska.
The latter in particular is instructive because the challenges were so formidable and the
transformation so all-encompassing. One of the more compelling stories from Alaska
was the conversation between the leadership and physicians who worked hard, were
well-liked by their patients, and who provided high levels of service. The response to
them was: you’re missing the point. It’s not about working endless hours and perpetu-
ating life-long dependence on repeated services. The goal is to wean the patients from
system dependency and increase their capacity to self-manage and otherwise partici-
pate in their health. This focus on PCC achieved a decline not only in the use of spe-
cialists and acute care; it also reduced by 20% the number of primary care visits.
Some components of PCC are in place in other countries. Some examples include:
1. Virtually same-day access to primary health care in England, and performance
indicators (publicly available) that in large measure reflect PCC concepts;
2. Web-based patient access to their EHRs in Denmark, with the capacity to add or
amend information and an audit trail of providers who have looked at the record;
3. High patient satisfaction scores on areas such as respect and communication at
a number of sites in the Commonwealth Fund’s patient centered care projects 6 .
There is a growing body of evaluative research on the impact of PCC. Just to cite find-
ings from the hospital sector, a PCC approach reduces length of stay; reduces costs;
increases patient and provider satisfaction; facilitates teamwork that changes the divi-
sion of labour; improves safety; reduces malpractice claims; increases employee reten-
tion rates; and promotes self-care 7 8 .
There is now a Canada-Europe collaboration to report on the consumer-centeredness
of various national health care systems. The most recent report – Euro-Canada Con-
sumer Health Index 2009 (available here) is an interesting exercise in evaluation. One
6
The Commonwealth Fund. Innovations: patient-centered care. There are write-ups of case studies that
describe performance, and summarize interviews with key participants.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Innovations/View-All.aspx?topic=Patient+Centered+Care
7
Charmel PA, Frampton S. Building the business case for patient-centered care: patient-centered care
has the potential to reduce adverse events, malpractice claims, and operating costs while improving mar-
ket share. Healthcare Financial Management 2008 (March), online at
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3257/is_3_62/ai_n24942366/?tag=content;col1
8
Sidani, op. cit.
9
can quibble with the indicators and the methods (often the rating score is based on the
formal existence of legislation or policy rather than empirical performance data), but the
report is quite candid about its limitations. While a consumer orientation is not identical
to PCC, many elements overlap and a number of the indicators are identical to those
proposed above. Canada does very poorly overall (notably, the report ranks us last of
32 countries on value for money).
This may seem jarring to Canadian sensibilities, and conflicts to some extent with satis-
faction surveys that generally give high marks to components of health care. But this
should not lead to complacency or denial; it is quite possible that we are acculturated to
bad service, have low expectations, and are pleased when they have been met or ex-
ceeded. The first requirement for improvement is insight into the status quo; the second
is commitment to change.

H. PCC and Primary Health Care

Just as patient-centered care is fundamental to health system transformation, primary
care is the fundamental site where it must succeed. The concept of the Patient-
Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is at the core of an envisioned transformation of pri-
mary care in the US. An evaluation of a multi-practice, national two-year demonstration
project has revealed some early lessons about the nature of change. Some of these
lessons challenge some of the theory and practice of quality improvement. It is worth
quoting the observations on the nature of change at some length:
Change is hard enough; transformation to a PCMH requires epic
whole-practice reimagination and redesign. It is much more than a se-
ries of incremental changes. Since the early 1990s, theories of quality
improvement emphasizing sequential plan-do-study-act cycles have
dominated change efforts within primary care practices. Many
N[ational] D[emonstration] P[roject] practices initially chose to take this
incremental approach—literally checking off each model component as
completed. They were soon overwhelmed with complications. Whereas
the traditional quality improvement model works for clearly bounded
clinical process changes, the NDP experience suggests that transfor-
mation to a PCMH requires a continuous, unrelenting process of
change. It represents a fundamental reimagination and redesign of
practice, replacing old patterns and processes with new ones. Trans-
formation includes new scheduling and access arrangements, new co-
ordination arrangements with other parts of the health care system,
group visits, new ways of bringing evidence to the point of care, quality
improvement activities, institution of more point-of-care services, de-
velopment of team-based care, changes in practice management, new

10
 strategies for patient engagement, and multiple new uses of informa-
tion systems and technology. 9
Change is more than a series of tools and techniques; “Such a fundamental shift nearly
always challenges doctors to reexamine their identity as a physician. 10 ” This is difficult
terrain and among other things depends on the “adaptive reserve” of a practice, mecha-
nisms to assist doctors to rethink their identities and practices, and above all, time to
plan, reflect, and experiment. This is a cultural shift that should not be reduced to or
presented in purely mechanical terms:
We should be wary of industrial-like schemes and excessive use of the lan-
guage of productivity and efficiency. Primary care, like healthy food, works
best at a local and personal level. What is waste on an assembly line is not
necessarily waste in a healing relationship; allow for appropriate variability.
Stewarding patients toward healthier lives is a deliberate process—
stewarding practices toward health and toward becoming a PCMH is also. 11

I. Getting to PCC
The transitional journey to a PCC system will be different for different parts of the sys-
tem. One research synthesis identified the following as important ingredients in the
change process:
• Feedback and measurement
• Patient/family involvement
• Workforce development
• Leadership
• Involvement in collaboratives, pilots. 12
The report also highlights the importance of policy in promoting PCC. The cited attrib-
utes apply to (typically large) organizations; it is different in primary care. Incentives at
all levels have to align with the goals.
Researchers emphasize that there is no one proven strategy for implementing PCC.
Some organizations, like Group Health Cooperative in Washington and Idaho and the
South-Central Foundation in Alaska, are governed by the people who get the service.
All the literature suggests that providers need to have the time and support to shift from
a paternalistic and dependency-inducing mindset to a more open, participatory, and en-
gaging model of joint decision-making and shared responsibility.

9
Nutting PA et al. Initial Lessons From the First National Demonstration Project on Practice Transforma-
tion to a Patient-Centered Medical Home. Ann Fam Med 2009;7:254-260, at 255.
http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/reprint/7/3/254
10
Ibid, p. 256.
11
Ibid., p. 259.
12
Silow-Carroll S, Alteras T, Stepnick L., op. cit. http://www.esresearch.org/documents_06/Overview.pdf
11
In Saskatchewan, based on quality improvement experiences to date and the overall
health system context, one might reasonably infer that we share a number of the barri-
ers cited in the literature, as well as conditions that support innovation. The following
steps would appear to be essential to making progress on the journey:
1. Focus on primary health care. PCC is not just process; it also prioritizes preven-
tion, self-care, and taking control of one’s health. Primary health care is the nu-
cleus for these developments. Patients are on a more equal footing than when
they are acutely ill or in need of residential care. They can learn to engage and
assume control when they are not old and sick and carry this learning forward for
the rest of their lives.
2. Develop PCC indicators that reflect the basic elements of PCC: access and con-
venience; navigating the parts of the system; and the quality of interactions with
providers. These not only facilitate the tracking of progress; they also signal to
the entire system and the public that PCC is fundamentally different from conven-
tional approaches and the metrics of success are likewise different.
3. Recognize that PCC is essentially a cultural shift supported by tools and tech-
niques – not the other way around. Some of the essential cultural changes are
deep-rooted and require a combination of individual and group reflection. They
challenge long-standing practices and assumptions. Providers in particular need
time and support to begin this journey.
4. Use policy levers to support the transition. Government pays for health care; it
has many options for how to pay, what to reward, what to discourage, etc. The
literature is unanimous in its assessment that incentives matter. An important ini-
tial step might be to do an analysis of how existing financial incentives align with
the early versions of PCC goals and indicators. This analysis could be the start
of fruitful discussions with boards, managers, professional associations, and un-
ions.
5. Get the public and patients involved early and often. They are the ones who ex-
perience PCC or its absence, and their needs and preferences are supposed to
drive change. The transition will in many ways be no easier for them than for
providers, but in that sense the playing field is level. Identifying articulate and
confident citizens and patients should be a high priority. PCC is all about ceding
control and listening; so, too is the journey towards successful implementation.
6. Develop a strategy for communicating the concepts and the advantages to the
public. One of the dilemmas is that a public long accustomed to a non-PCC sys-
tem may be a victim of low expectations. Ideally, public pressure should drive
transformation. But the public has to have a vision and expectation of a different
health care world. Somehow the public has to learn that PCC is possible, and
that it looks vastly different from what most of them experience. In a sense their
satisfaction with and acceptance of the status quo has to be broken down if they
are to be change agents. This is a delicate balance but without a shift in public
attitudes and a strengthening of resolve, the barriers to change may prove formi-
dable.
12
 7. Capitalize on opportunities presented by the e-health revolution. The design of
the EHR and its use are vital to PCC success. An open, engaged model creates
common ground for providers and patients. Having access to and some control
over one’s own health information can build confidence and create a sense of
shared responsibility.
8. Use the main concepts and language of PCC in important speeches, documents,
and memoranda of understanding. A serious and sustained effort requires rein-
forcement, repetition, and constant symbolic affirmation.

13

View publication stats