Traditional approaches to healthcare typically frame providers as expert authority figures and patients as passive recipients of medical treatment. Patient-centered care eliminates this hierarchy by treating patients as equal collaborators and decision-makers. This innovative model emphasizes the importance of each patient’s unique background, knowledge, preferences and values.
Advances in health informatics and medical technology have made it easier for healthcare professionals to use patient-centered approaches. Providers can use digital devices and other tools to co-create care plans with patients, families and other clinicians. Health informatics professionals can play a vital role in promoting patient-centered care in this rapidly digital healthcare environment.
What Is Patient-Centered Care?
This healthcare service model focuses on patients’ desires, expertise and stories instead of prioritizing only the knowledge of doctors and nurses. Healthcare providers who practice patient-centered care recognize each patient’s unique needs and work closely with their care team to develop appropriate healthcare solutions and treatments.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a division of the National Library of Medicine, this healthcare model considers multiple domains, or dimensions, of the patient’s life and wellbeing, including:
- Ability to access healthcare facilities and providers, either in-person or virtually.
- Continuity and transfer of care through referrals.
- Coordination of care with other clinicians and family members.
- Emotional support networks.
- Everyday activities.
- Family and friends.
- Level of education, including their knowledge of their health conditions.
- Lifestyle preferences.
- Physical comfort in waiting and treatment rooms.
- Presence of multi-morbidity.
- Secure sharing of patient data like lab reports.
Providers who prioritize these factors can help patients gain greater control of their healthcare and feel more confident advocating for themselves.
What Are the Benefits of Patient-Centered Care?
Patient-centered care provides numerous advantages for patients, families, providers and health systems. According to NCBI, some of the benefits of this approach include:
- Empowering patients to participate in healthcare decisions instead of passively accepting the provider’s decision.
- Enhanced physical and social wellbeing of patients.
- Greater family involvement.
- Higher patient satisfaction with care received.
- Improved patient outcomes.
- Patients and providers can develop shared goals and shared knowledge.
- Stronger and more trusting relationships between patients and providers.
Individuals with multiple chronic health conditions may benefit the most from patient-centered care as these patients can receive tailored healthcare solutions that address their co-morbidities instead of treating each disorder individually.
What Are Examples of Patient-Centered Care?
Approaches to patient-centered care vary widely, but strategies often used by healthcare professionals who follow this model include:
- Communicating regularly with patients through email or online software.
- Creating a welcoming atmosphere in healthcare facilities.
- Expanding care practices to encompass the patient’s cultural, psychological, social and spiritual needs.
- Improving access to care by allowing same-day appointments and easy referrals to specialists
- Reframing healthcare providers as advisors or partners, not bosses or rule-makers.
- Seeking to understand how the patient’s illness impacts their personal goals and daily life.
- Sharing power with patients and promoting their agency to make decisions.
- Soliciting feedback from patients.
- Treating all patients with empathy, respect and trust.
- Working with family members and specialists to coordinate care.
These techniques decenter the authority and expertise of providers and shift the focus to patients’ experiences and goals.
What Are the 4 C’s of Patient-Centered Care?
Healthcare providers use four pillars to promote patient-centered care, known informally as the four C’s. These functions include:
- Contact: This tenet refers to the patient’s ability to access and receive high-quality healthcare. Policies that can make contact easier for patients include eliminating or reducing requirements to see a specialist, offering after-hours virtual appointments, shortening wait times for appointments and allowing same–day appointments.
- Comprehensiveness: This term refers to the range of services offered by a provider or facility. Patient-centered care facilities should strive to offer a broad scope of services that can serve any population and treat common health problems. The care team should also be able to treat acute and chronic conditions of varying degrees of severity. Comprehensive services can meet the diverse needs of patients with multiple morbidities.
- Coordination: Patient-centered care should bring together every member of the patient’s treatment team across health system levels. For instance, a care team could involve a primary care physician, secondary clinicians, specialists and pharmacists. Providers can improve coordination by communicating with each other regularly about the patient’s status, referring patients to specialists and connecting patients to community and social services as needed.
- Continuity: Building relationships and long-term care plans are two central goals of patient-centered care. Providers can develop close relationships with patients over time by developing trust, scheduling repeat appointments and personalizing care.
Together, the 4 C’s ensure patients have convenient access to quality healthcare and resources. These tenets also help healthcare systems function more efficiently and reduce patient costs.
How Can Health Informatics Help Improve Patient-Centered Care?
Recent developments in health informatics make it easier than ever for healthcare professionals to provide patient-centered care. Health informatics uses information technology and data to create more efficient healthcare delivery systems. These enhanced workflows allow patients and providers to communicate and share information more seamlessly.
Examples of ways that health informatics can facilitate patient-centered care include:
- Healthcare facilities can send electronic surveys to patients to measure their satisfaction.
- Mobile applications allow patients to monitor their health and send data directly to providers.
- Patients can securely access their electronic health records (EHRs) online.
- Providers can easily transfer EHRs and send referrals to other specialists.
- Videoconferencing tools let providers interact with patients in new ways, such as telehealth appointments.
These digital technologies offer new opportunities for collaboration and patient empowerment. They also enable providers to deliver more comprehensive and personalized care, improving patient outcomes.
Earn a Health Informatics Graduate Degree
Are you interested in learning more about health informatics and how it can help transform healthcare and patient-centered care? The University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine offers an online Master of Science in Health Informatics (MSHI) and MSHI Healthcare Analytics degree, as well as graduate certificates in health informatics and healthcare analytics to help you prepare to become a leader in the healthcare industry. You’ll study how innovative technologies can create better healthcare delivery and planning solutions, and graduates can use their education to facilitate more efficient patient-centered care delivery in clinics, hospitals, outpatient centers and other healthcare settings.
