Before technologic advances in imaging, such as PET/ MRI and molecular imaging–guided oncologic treatment, changed the practice of radiology, before antibiotics and vaccines provided widespread pharmacologic means to treat and prevent disease, before antiseptic technique markedly reduced surgical death rates, our ability to minister to patients and their families was to listen, comfort, and sup...

Describe what is meant by patient-centered care. Patient-centered care is a patient care experience designed to meet the individual patient’s and family members’ needs at each step in the care process. It should take into account the patient and his or her social circumstances because it may dictate differences in aspects of the care to be delivered. Using total joint replacement as an example,...

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has long supported the use of balanced measures to assess improvement among patients at both the individual and the population levels. Although biomedical outcomes and process measures have been widely accepted, patient-reported measures are still not in widespread use. The most common use of such measures is at the population level to gauge satisfaction...

Functional medicine is essentially patient centered, rather than disease centered. A structure is presented for uniting a patient-centered approach to diagnosis and treatment with the fruits of modern clinical science (which evolved primarily to serve the prevailing model of disease-centered care). The core scientific concepts of disease pathogenesis are antecedents, triggers, and mediators. An...

Integrative medicine has emerged as a potential solution to the American healthcare crisis. It provides care that is patient centered, healing oriented, emphasizes the therapeutic relationship, and uses therapeutic approaches originating from conventional and alternative medicine. Initially driven by consumer demand, the attention integrative medicine places on understanding whole persons and a...

ONE YEAR AFTER THE HISTORIC PASSAGE OF THE AFfordable Care Act (ACA), the individual mandate is subject to ongoing scrutiny both by the federal courts and Congress. This provision of the ACA would require most individuals to purchase health insurance, and recent attention has focused on the important legal issues associated with such a mandate. However, far less attention has been devoted to th...

Patient- and family-centered care is an approach to the planning, delivery, and evaluation of health care that is grounded in a mutually beneficial partnership among patients, families, and health care professionals. Providing patient- and family-centered care to children in the emergency department setting presents many opportunities and challenges. This revised technical report draws on previ...