How to Deliver Patient-Centered Care: Learn from Service Industries by Brian Powers, Amol S. Navathe, and Sachin H. Jain
According to the National Library of Medicine, patient-centered care is defined as care that focuses on the individual’s specific health needs. It is said that the idea of patient-centered care will encourage patients to be more active and participatory in their care. In the article referenced above, Powers, Navaho and Jain discuss the importance of viewing health care as a service industry in the sense to provide tailored services to each patient (patient-centered care). Since high-quality healthcare is connected to patient-centered care, Powers and his peers agree that healthcare systems can benefit greatly from strategies and insights of service industries. Patient-centered can help reduce costs and improve the quality of care. They make it crystal clear that perhaps introducing more patient-centered care will benefit the patients, obviously, and the provider too. Patients will be more active and involved while providers and practices will possibly be more prepared to service patience since their specific needs and preferences are documented.
The article notes that the current approaches to patient-centered are based on “general” preferences and that does not align with the majority since all patients are diverse. The point of adopting strategies from the service industry is to provide individual, tailored service just as the service industry does. The article mentions a perfect example to explain the argument, a New York restaurant, which uses individualized care and hospitality to cater to its customers. Customers visiting for formal matters may receive a more formal service rather than tourists who may receive longer explanations of items offered at the restaurant. The article also mentions how customer segmentation can assist with the provider’s side of tailored service using electronic databases.
I agree with the idea of patient-centered care. I agree with Powers that it could help patients be more active in their care, but I think that implementing such individualized care requires a substantial number of resources (time and money). The system of providing care based on what the patient needs is a way to ensure health equality and equity too. I think of it as providing lunch to children at school. All children will have access to school lunch, but the food items given would be based on the individual children’s needs. Some may have milk allergies; others may have egg or peanut allergies; some may even have religious restrictions. There should not be a generalized way to care for everyone, simply because not one person is alike. I also believe that implementing a patient-centered healthcare system will improve health outcomes because health literacy would be improved which could help eliminate other barriers to good health (i.e. self-efficacy).
Powers and his peers presented their argument of patient-centered care which easily won my vote however, I don’t think they presented the possibility with enough stated facts, nor did they mention the cons of putting the patient at the center of care. The article made the idea seem easier than it may be. Time may be a barrier to the idea of patient-centered healthcare simply because every doctor may not have the time available to build meaningful bonds with each patient they serve. According to an article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the time taken to gather initial data and a care plan would depend on the baseline knowledge of the patient, their level of intelligence, the complexity of the patient’s problems, and the level of communication between the provider and the patient. In my own experience with doctor visits, I receive very general care, I’m typically not remembered, I am asked the same questions, and nothing feels personalized. Since a patient-centered care plan would require more time to be spent with patients, this would mean providers would serve fewer patients in a day and ultimately there would be a demand for more medical professionals. All in all, I feel that the argument was presented well but needed more facts to prove its benefits. A good argument mentions the pros and cons of an idea and disproves the cons for the sake of the argument, I feel that Powers’ view lacked that aspect.
Dunn N. (2003). Practical issues around putting the patient at the centre of care. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 96(7), 325–327. https://doi.org/10.1177/014107680309600704
Powers, B., Navathe, A., & Jain, S. (2013, April 19). How to Deliver Patient-Centered Care: Learn from Service IndustriesBria [Web log post]. Retrieved February 08, 2023, from https://hbr.org/2013/04/how-to-deliver-patient-centere
Reynolds A. (2009). Patient-centered Care. Radiologic technology, 81(2), 133–147.