Patient-Centered Health Care: Where YOU are the MVP

This October, Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month, we celebrate our patients for the MVP’s that they are. Griffin Hospital and hospitals and healthcare organizations around the world join Planetree, Inc. in Derby this October to commemorate the 8th annual Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month.

Patients as Our MVPs: Most Valuable Partners

This year’s theme, “Patients as Our MVPs: Most Valuable Partners,” emphasizes that the creation of a patient-centered healthcare system remains an unattainable ideal until healthcare organizations embrace and encourage the essential role that patients and their loved ones play as partners in this endeavor.“

Many definitions of patient-centered care focus on the individual at the center of the care experience and providing personalized care to accommodate that central person’s needs, preferences and values,” said Susan Frampton, PhD, President of Planetree and Co-Chair of the National Quality Forum’s National Priorities Partnership. “But our ability to provide that kind of care hinges less on the lone patient at the center, and more on the partnerships forged between that patient, his or her providers and their loved ones. Patients alone cannot create patient-centered care, nor can providers. This is a collective effort, grounded in partnerships that nurture trust, transparency and collaboration.”

Headquartered in Griffin Hospital, Planetree is a non-profit organization that provides education and information in a collaborative community of healthcare organizations, facilitating efforts to create patient-centered care in healing environments. Since its founding in 1978, Planetree has been a pioneer in personalizing, humanizing and demystifying the healthcare experience for patients and their families.

Founded by a patient, the Planetree Model is committed to enhancing healthcare from the patient’s perspective. It empowers patients and families through information and education, and encourages “healing partnerships” with caregivers to support active participation. Through organizational transformation, the Planetree Model creates healing environments in which patients can be active participants and caregivers are enabled to thrive.

Planetree, the sponsoring organization of Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month since the campaign’s inception, has made available a number of “partnership activation tools” available to support both healthcare professionals, and patients and family members in partnering more effectively with each other. In addition, organizations and individuals are being asked to commit to personal changes they will make to embody the spirit of partnership in their healthcare encounters.

A centerpiece of this year’s Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month is a collection of patient-preferred practices, field-tested practices that recast how healthcare professionals and patients and family members interact with each other. Among these practices are the shared medical record, patient-directed visiting, care partner programs and bedside shift report. Healthcare organizations around the world will be challenged during the month of October to adopt these patient-preferred practices, as well as to enlist the involvement of patients and family members in developing plans for implementing them.

For more information about Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month and Planetree, visit Planetree.org.