What is
Patient-Centred Care?

Understanding Patient-Centred Care. Patient-Centric Care. Human Centred Care. You have heard the terms, but what do they all mean and where do you start? Below we bring you up to speed on the basics.

Understanding Patient-Centred Care

Patient-Centred Care (also known as Patient-Partnership, Patient-Centric or Human-Centred Care) is essentially an approach to healthcare which puts the needs and preferences of the patient at the centre of all decisions being made. In this approach, the patient and health care professionals work together in partnership to make shared decisions around the care plan to deliver the health outcomes that are desired by the individual patient.

What is Value-based Health Care?

Value-based health care refers to a healthcare delivery model whereby the healthcare providers are renumerated based on patient outcomes (value) rather than the number of healthcare services delivered (volume). Value in health is the measured improvement in a patient’s health outcomes for the cost of achieving that improvement.

Value-based health care starts with a segment of patients whose health and related circumstances create a consistent set of needs. Patients work in partnership with multidisciplinary healthcare professionals to design and deliver comprehensive solutions to address those needs, measuring the health outcomes and costs of care for each patient.

What is Outcomes-based Health Care?

Outcomes are the success metrics of value-based health care. Outcomes-based health care requires a shift from success being focused on volume based metrics (inputs, activities, outputs) to value (outcomes, impacts). Measuring and achieving outcomes that really matter for each individual patient are the core metrics to ensure health care services improve patient outcomes.

How do they work together?

Both elements support each other. Value-based health care describes the overarching operating model and measuring patient outcomes for each patient is how success of the operating model is measured.

What are the benefits of a Patient-Centred Care Approach?

Taking a patient-centred approach which is respectful of, and in tune with, the outcomes that matter for the patient is a key component of providing high quality healthcare.

There is widely recognised research to suggest that a patient-centred approach to healthcare can also lead to improvements in safety, quality and cost effectiveness as well as increases in patient and staff satisfaction.

Key benefits of a patient-centred healthcare model include: