A Patient-centric approach in healthcare and its importance

Puneet Dasari

Business Analyst

A Patient-centric approach in healthcare and its importance

A patient-centric approach is simply a consumer driven decision-making method of involving active self, families, and friends mainly to cure or to retain a disease when there are various options to treat instead of passive method, where no group of patient members as families and friends are excluded in it. When diagnosis is needed to detect and treat early stage of cancer the participation of patients is widely essential to produce end results ^[1]. Patient centricity is like from UK’s NHS driven healthcare it means “no decision about me, without me”^[2]. The idea behind it is to have consumer-centric approach in healthcare organisations as well, so that the operational needs have to be redesigned as to meet core fundamentals for the end user^[3]. Knowing risks such as side effects and complications of understanding by patients is ideal to avoid unnecessary misinterpretation of health treatment as needed. And so, this is where the patient needs to have a choice based on their priorities and preferences, it is like one cannot initiate a protocol without patient’s input, meaning the patients concerns are to be discussed first by service providers or healthcare professionals.

Why is it Important being Patient-centric in healthcare?

A transition of change is crucial in consumer centric world where companies used to build apps especially for engineers, sometimes it used to work or may not. Ultimately in the mobile platform the end user looks upon the usable factor of convenience in the usage of application otherwise switches to another app which fulfils the needs ^[4]. Likewise, patient-centric approach from the business point-of-view is to improve patient engagement and positive viability and continued patient’s participation in healthcare. From the medical point-of-view patients engage better with treatment care, reduce their symptoms and a low possibility of re-admitting for the same cause in a hospital ^[5]. Internet is being rather an incredible tool for patients to share their health information and patient stories on social media which makes the ‘voice of patients’ more acknowledgeable so that today’s well-being of the patients is to be taken care as a consumer which will make tomorrows future transforming into patient centric. Knowing patient centric is all about what the patient is expecting the type of care, the treatment and to educate the health condition of expectancy and the actual reality they’re in, this will allow the healthcare to value certain metrics and commodity of patients and families first, then business and healthcare professionals second ^[6]. Having a significant healthcare vision of accumulating information of what patients’ requirement is to be understood by each employee in the span of short time. For instance, forming a set of protocols to cardiovascular vision can be simply expressed to potentially overcome an outcome or challenge. Having no vision at all in patient centric approach leads nowhere and especially does not reach a level for fulfilling objectives ^[7]. Once a vision is specified in a particular domain, the only thing remains for the healthcare organisation is to set strategical decisions and tactics straight forward. This helps the hierarchy to set healthcare administration in check by validating what comes from the patient point of view and their feedback on the healthcare businesses.

Embrace these five Fundamentals!

To Ensure patient centric is taken care as a substitute for benefit, the healthcare should carry ^[8]:

Continuous engagement with patients from the beginning,
Embed within the organisation,
Set metrics and be responsible – if it works, it works or else seek feedback from the patients,
Be dynamic to sort evolving needs in new ways,
Make patient’s voices are heard so that they are considered as the core end user of the healthcare business.

Three essential Principles as commodities

The three essential principles created and brought out by ‘Alicia Staley’ from Medidata ^[9] which is called as a designed patient-centric by design (PCbd) framework:

Design: Development of design products comes from the patient point-of-view with their journey to identify shared feelings, how they conceptualise, their expectations of the prototypes and the end-result of product testing.
Engagement: Its form to build and share patient point of interactions consistent throughout designing process of events from the beginning which is stated as ‘Patient Design Studios’.
Activation: Continuous participation is expected as the part in the clinical research as ‘Patient Design Advisory Board’ where the members of that group administrate the ‘lifecycle methodology of PCbD’.

Benefits

For patients, the appreciations are higher knowing the risk of covid-19 pandemic of who are participating in the clinical trials of vaccine development. Also sharing what is being collecting during clinical trials is essential, so that it empowers patients to take part in clinical trial and benefits their whole life for making a particular drug by the healthcare organisation ^[10].
Beside economic phase, basic benefits of patient-centricity have seen significant results for patients and the level of care.
In a way healthcare organisation will have growing reputation, be trusted by the society-patients and be beneficial in creating new products developing drugs and eventually leads in improved services.
All participants can see increased engagement with patients, healthcare providers and others, with more knowledge and collaboration of understanding patient’s choices of health in well-being, that means better care with less illness and allows healthcare providers to take better decisions ^[4].

Conclusion

The core thing here is the connection between healthcare and patient’s sophistication of need and change of requirement is highly demanding in the form of patient/consumer-centric approach, the first important thing that always comes here for healthcare providers is considering the patient perspective no matter where the business stands. Whole priorities of the business and decision-making capabilities are and will have to be transparent between to parties so that the trust goes up for the patients in terms of society. This allows significant market changes in terms of healthcare business or patient medical needs, is only decided by receiving the patient’s feedback with having consistent participation, which shifts the healthcare provide quality of care and life for a strong bond of satisfaction for a ‘patient sided’ healthcare company.

References

1. Dr J Sivakumaran, 2019. Patient Centricity In Healthcare – Express Healthcare. [online] Express Healthcare. Available at: <https://www.expresshealthcare.in/specials/patient-centricity-in-healthcare/308842/> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

2. Suzanne Lipinski, 2014. Patient Centricity: What Is It – And Why Aren’t We There Yet? | Reuters Events | Pharma. [online] Reutersevents.com. Available at: <https://www.reutersevents.com/pharma/patients/patient-centricity-what-it-and-why-arent-we-there-yet> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

3. Paul Stoddart, 2019. Patient-Centric Healthcare: It’s Time For A New Operating Model – Smarter Business Review. [online] Smarter Business Review. Available at: <https://www.ibm.com/blogs/services/2019/03/14/patient-centric-healthcare-its-time-for-a-new-operating-model/> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

4. Partners.healthgrades.com. 2021. What Is A Patient-Centric Approach? | Benefits & Common Questions | Healthgrades. [online] Available at: <https://partners.healthgrades.com/faq/what-is-a-patient-centric-approach#:~:text=A%20patient-centric%20approach%20is,wants%2C%20needs%2C%20and%20preferences.> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

5. www.velvetech.com. 2020. Patient-Centric Healthcare: What Providers Must Know. [online] Available at: <https://www.velvetech.com/blog/patient-centric-healthcare/> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

6. Katrina Megget, 2018. Walking The Patient  Centric Talk. [online] PharmaTimes. Available at: <http://www.pharmatimes.com/magazine/2018/may_2018/walking_the_patient_centric_talk> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

7. Joel Sauer, 2018. What Patient Centric Care Really Means. [online] American College of Cardiology. Available at: <https://www.acc.org/membership/sections-and-councils/cardiovascular-management-section/section-updates/2018/07/10/14/42/what-patient-centric-care-really-means> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

8. Bruce Goodwin, 2019. The Powerful Impact Of Taking A Patient-Centric Approach In An Evolving Health Landscape. [online] PharmaBoardroom. Available at: <https://pharmaboardroom.com/articles/the-powerful-impact-of-taking-a-patient-centric-approach/> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

9. Paul Oliver, 2020. Patient Centricity By Design: How Medidata Infuses Patient Voices Into The Software Development Life Cycle | Medidata Solutions. [online] Medidata Solutions. Available at: <https://www.medidata.com/en/blog/patient-centricity-by-design-how-medidata-infuses-patient-voices-into-the-software-development-life-cycle> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

10. Paul Oliver, 2020. How Patient Centricity Benefits Patients, Clinical Outcomes, And Drug Development | Medidata Solutions. [online] Medidata Solutions. Available at: <https://www.medidata.com/en/blog/how-patient-centricity-benefits-patients-clinical-outcomes-and-drug-development> [Accessed 16 January 2021].

A Patient-centric approach in healthcare and its importance