by Ted Eytan, on 02 Aug 2007 07:56 pm
The Journey
Patient and Family Centered Care
Patient and Family Centered Care - what better a concept to go hand in hand with LEAN!
I was invited as a guest of The Commonwealth Fund to attend (and ultimately present) at the 3rd International Conference on Patient and Family Centered Care. Luckily, this conference was in Seattle, and in a hotel just across the street from one of our shining medical centers in the downtown corridor.
Participating in this conference for me was like seeing long lost cousins - it was agreed from the beginning who we are all working for in health care. And there are a lot of impressive organizations working to bring patients and families into every aspect of the care process, even in our own community. Sometimes the best way to learn about what a colleague actually does is travel somewhere with them….
What I showed was our approach to health information technology, which is designed with patients at the center. Much of H.I.T. today might not be described as such. The “customer” of these systems is often the care provider. The ultimate decision maker in the patient-physician relationship, though, is the patient, and therefore, the technology and systems we create should help the patients make the best decisions.
With that in mind, this survey title from Harris Interactive is concerning to me, and not in the spirit of what we are trying to accomplish. It appears to characterize health information seeking by patients as pathological. Could it be that health information seeking is a response to health information deficit?