"...patient-centered care, in its essence, is about partnerships."
Thomas Bodenheimer and Kevin Grumbach
Improving Primary Care: Strategies and Tools for a Better Practice, 2007
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Collaboration in the clinical encounter |
The principles underlying patient- and family-centered care can serve as a framework for making primary care responsive to the concerns and priorities of all. This approach to health care involves patients and their families as partners in their own care as well as in planning, implementing, and evaluating improvements to the systems of care. Patient- and family-centered care places an emphasis on collaborating with patients and families of all ages, at all levels of care, and in all health care settings. Further, it acknowledges that families, however they are defined, are essential to patients' health and well-being and are allies for quality and safety.
Primary care providers who practice patient- and family-centered care know that high-quality, safe care requires partnerships with patients and family members as well as with other care providers and community members. This approach enhances the quality and experience of care for patients and families and the quality of the work experience for practitioners and staff.
Recommendations and Promising Practices
The primary care setting provides an ideal opportunity for health care providers to work in partnerships with patients and families in developing individual plans of care. Read more.
Patients and Families as Advisors in Primary Care
Patients and families are being asked to take an active role in their own health care and engage as partners with health care providers to improve their own health or that of their family members - whether that means enhancing their ability to prevent illness, taking steps to insure health care safety, or improving their skills to self-manage a chronic condition. Read more.
Advancing the Practice of Patient- and Family-Centered Ambulatory Care: How to Get Started.
What is patient- and family-centered ambulatory care? Why does it matter? How does it fit with our overall mission? And finally, what can our practice or organization do to advance the practice of patient- and family-centered care? Read more.
The Commonwealth Fund launched the Patient-Centered Primary Care Initiative in 2005 to encourage primary care practices and health care systems to redesign the delivery of health care around the needs and priorities of patients. Projects supported by the initiative seek to promote:
- The collection of information on patients' experiences with health care, and the public reporting of that information as a way to encourage quality improvement in primary care.
- The adoption of models and tools to help primary care practices restructure and improve care to meet patients' preferences.
- Improvements in policy that support patient-centered care.
The Institute for Family-Centered Care received support to initiate the development of this section of our website from The Commonwealth Fund.