Patient-centric care addresses each patient’s values, preferences, and goals. It encourages shared decision-making, allowing patients to choose multiple diagnostic and treatment options.
Practicing patient-centric care requires medical practices and organizations to change their operational strategies. This includes implementing patient-friendly procedures like appointment agenda-setting and wellness goal-setting.
Patient Engagement
Patient engagement refers to patients’ active participation in their healthcare. This includes shared decision-making, individualized care and education, and patient-provider communication. Patient-centered healthcare also promotes patient satisfaction, which can be directly correlated to patient retention rates.
Patients’ knowledge and willpower to participate in their healthcare significantly influence patient engagement’s effectiveness. To encourage patient engagement, it is essential to understand the antecedents and consequences of the concept. For instance, implementing personalized care plans and enhancing patient engagement are effective strategies to increase patient retention, ensuring ongoing relationships and improved health outcomes.
The antecedents of patient engagement include competencies, attitudes, and behaviors. Competences describe the proliferation of skills and knowledge that empower patients to engage in healthcare. Attitudes are a patient’s perceived sense of control over their ability to engage in a particular behavior, such as patient engagement. Finally, behaviors are a patient’s actions to engage in their healthcare. Examples of these actions are patient-centered healthcare, self-management, and health literacy. Each of these is a part of the patient-centric model and can lead to improved patient outcomes.
Patient Retention
Retention is a critical component of patient-centric care, as it helps ensure that patients remain engaged with their healthcare provider and continue receiving quality services. In addition, retaining existing patients saves medical practices the time and costs associated with recruiting new ones. Understanding patient needs, providing quality care, and maintaining clear communication are vital aspects of how to retain patients within healthcare practice, fostering trust and loyalty over time.
Patient-centered care also focuses on building strong connections with patients, which fosters trust and leads to more effective patient outcomes. Developing these relationships requires a clear understanding of what patients want and need from their providers.
For example, patient-centered care in the hospital means that visitors are not restricted to strict visiting hours and that patients have control over who visits them, when they visit and for how long. It also includes empowering patients to set wellness goals, collect feedback, and overcome power hierarchies. Patients with a strong relationship with their healthcare providers are more likely to continue seeking their services, resulting in higher revenue and better patient outcomes.
Patient Satisfaction
Patient satisfaction is how well a healthcare experience meets or exceeds an individual’s expectations. This is why two people receiving identical care can receive different satisfaction ratings.
When patients are satisfied, they are more likely to stay with the same doctor or hospital and will follow their advice, which reduces strain on a health system that’s already overwhelmed. This can also reduce the number of hospital- or physician-shopping patients, a common cause of poor care outcomes.
Patient-centric care focuses on the patient as a unique healthcare consumer, involving their preferences and needs in every decision. It emphasizes respectful, dignified treatment and respect for cultural values. It involves thorough care and a willingness to provide understandable, detailed information. The research defined seven primary principles that define patient-centered care. Using these as guidelines, practices can create an environment that maximizes patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. Moreover, implementing patient-centric technology such as a secure, 2-way messaging platform can help approaches resolve communication challenges and increase satisfaction.
Patient Safety
Patient-centric care is rapidly becoming the favored operating model for life science and healthcare organizations. However, many organizations need to understand all it encompasses to embrace the patient-centric mantra truly.
Rather than treating patients like cogs in a machine, patient-centric care involves listening to their concerns and providing accurate information that allows them to make the best decisions. It includes recognizing and respecting their beliefs, values, and cultural differences. It also includes promoting preventive health measures and allowing patients to participate actively in their wellness journey.
Providers should set clear expectations for each patient and strive to meet them every time. They should provide patients and their families with understandable, detailed information about medications, physical limitations, dietary needs, and other aspects of the patient’s medical treatment. They should also encourage patients to seek help early when they feel overwhelmed or stressed, reducing their need for expensive hospital and doctor shopping.
