The Promise of Quality and a Pathway to Equity

One of the six components of quality health care identified by the Institute of Medicine is patient-centeredness. While there has been significant attention on the components of safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, there has been less attention on the components of equity and patient-centeredness.

I have begun to use patient-centeredness as a key concept to drive change and improvement in our health care systems, as well as a pathway to health equity. To me, patient-centeredness means providing the best care to all patients at all times, based on their individual, contextualized needs and preferences. It means customizing and tailoring health care and services for diverse individuals while expecting and achieving the same (highest) quality outcomes for everyone. If we can really transform our current health care systems into more patient-centered ones where patients really are more engaged as partners in their own health care and their own health, we are likely to see quality improvement, reduction of health care disparities, more engaged clinicians and health care providers, and patients and health care consumers with greatly improved experiences of health care