So what is “patient-centered” care?
At its core, patient-centered care focuses on coordination among family doctors, specialists, hospitals, patients and their family members to ensure patients are getting the best care possible. It also aims to treat a patient’s overall well-being, rather than just one illness, and encourage him to participate in his own care.
So what does it mean for patients?
Patient-centered care can take many forms. For example, it may mean 24-hour access to nurses or other providers via phone, email or other technology. It may mean a phone call from a nurse to remind you about an appointment, or to let you know it’s time for a physical or a flu shot. As you’re waiting to be discharged from the hospital, it could mean a pharmacist bringing medications to your room that you’ll need once you get home.
And what does that mean for health care providers?
Many health care providers are adopting electronic medical records, critical to coordinating care for a patients by sharing records quickly and easily. For some, it may mean having nurses or other staff specifically focused on making follow-up calls or home visits for patients recently discharged from the hospital. Patient-centered care may mean teams of doctors getting together each week to discuss specific patient cases. And it may involve the use of social workers to ensure patients have transportation to and from appointments.
A gift of $25 million to the Emory University School of Medicine aims to improve “patient-centered” care — an emerging trend in medicine that emphasizes coordination among all the people who are treating a patient, plus better communication and access to clinical staff 24 hours a day, the university announced Tuesday.
The grant from the James M. Cox Foundation is unique for Emory in that its primary focus is improving patient experiences and not strictly the advancing of medical research, new drug development or clinical trials.
Nationwide, health care providers are increasingly focusing on “patient-centered” coordination among family doctors, specialists, hospitals, patients and their family members to ensure patients are getting the best care possible. Emory’s new program will focus first on prostate cancer care.
“I’m intensely aware of how good the medical care was that I received,” said Jim Kennedy, chairman of Cox Enterprises and president of the James M. Cox Foundation, of his own treatment for prostate cancer at Emory. “The doctors are great. The care is great.”
And yet, even with the life-saving care he received, Kennedy said he experienced frustrations that nearly all medical patients with a serious condition experience when waiting for test results.
“The wait times are always frustrating, the scans, the biopsies,” Kennedy said. “By the time it (the information) got around to me, I was petrified and worried.”
The James M. Cox Foundation is a philanthropic organization that is active in communities where Cox Enterprises Inc. does business. Cox Enterprises, based in Atlanta, is the parent company of Cox Media Group, whose media properties include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In recent years, the Affordable Care Act has fueled the growth of patient-centered care models that encourage physicians, insurers and hospitals to work together to treat patients using electronic medical records and other technologies. The goal: improve patient outcomes and satisfaction, while also saving money by avoiding redundant testing and other inefficiencies.
Kennedy, who is now cancer free, said one of the results he would like to see from the grant to Emory is less waiting time for lab and biopsy results.
“When it’s your life, it’s frustrating,” he said.
Such problems are endemic in the U.S. healthcare system.
The U.S. is a leader in the development of major medical advances — new drugs, new therapies and new surgical techniques — “but there are opportunities in how we do these things and operate as a tight-functioning team,” said Dr. William Bornstein, Emory Healthcare’s chief medical and quality officer.
Emory’s grant from the Cox Foundation will last for five years.
The university is investing in technology so all healthcare team members involved in a patient’s care can stay in the loop on the next steps for treatment. In addition to speeding up the sharing of lab results for patients, new technology will also help eliminate unnecessary office visits.
For instance, a patient who had surgery but has been released from the hospital could be served just as well in some cases by sharing an image of his or her wound with a nurse or doctor via telemedicine — on a smart phone or computer, Bornstein said.
“It’s stressful for everybody,” Bornstein said. “(Patients) shouldn’t have to spend a day to come see us.”
Dr. Christian Larsen, dean of Emory’s School of Medicine and an expert in organ transplants, noted that in complicated cases such as transplants, every member of the surgical team knows the treatment protocol when the patient leaves the operating room. This has multiple benefits for the patient.
“I can say that I know everyone on the team will know how the patient will be followed, all appointments will be scheduled, and I am confident that, when the patient is able, labs will be done,” Larsen said.
This kind of attention to every single detail needs to happen in the case of every patient, everywhere, he said.
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