Patient Centered Approach

A "Patient Centered Approach" to medicine is also known as a Team Based Approach. I prefer the latter since the former implies that the patient has not always been the focus of many well intentioned caregives. A Team Based Approach utilizes caregivers from many different discliplines, physicians and non-physicians, in order to coordinate the approach to a given patient. Institutions like the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic have very good outcomes utilizing this approach, however many smaller institutions, including our own, have similar outcomes. What is different is the way in which patients perceive or experience their care. The Clinics, in their model, have hired all of the physician on the team, use the same information systems, and seem to have an easier time communicating between the caregivers and the patients. This is possible at institutions that do not employ their caregivers, but the myriad scheduling systems, billing systems, electronic health records and even simply locations create the need for an extra solution to get to the same place. At Anna Jaques, we are constantly looking for better ways to communicate with patients, physicians and family. We are going to implement soon the Physician/Nurse Rounding structure which I will describe in tomorrows blog.