Three keys to a shared vision of diagnostic assessment: an initiative in person-centered care from the Department of Health in the UK

Diagnosis is the missing link in person-centered care. Person-centered care has covered many different aspects of such important areas as treatment, resource allocation, and ethical practice (particularly concerned with patient autonomy). But with important exceptions [1, 2], diagnosis has been widely assumed to be, somehow, reserved to the scientific and other skills of doctors and healthcare professionals, and hence as being beyond the relevant scope of person-centered approaches.