Patient-centeredness-the idea that care should be designed around patients' needs, preferences, circumstances, and well-being-is a central tenet of health care delivery. For CEOs of health care organizations, patient-centered care is also quickly becoming a business imperative, with payments tied to performance on measures of patient satisfaction and engagement. In A CEO Checklist for High-Value Health Care, we, as executives of eleven leading health care delivery institutions, outlined ten key strategies for reducing costs and waste while improving outcomes. In this article we describe how implementation of these strategies benefits both health care organizations and patients. For example, Kaiser Permanente's Healthy Bones Program resulted in a 30 percent reduction in hip fracture rates for at-risk patients. And at Virginia Mason Health System in Seattle, nurses reorganized care patterns and increased the time they spent on direct patient care to 90 percent. Our experiences show that patient-engaged care can be delivered in ways that simultaneously improve quality and reduce costs.A dozen years ago a landmark Institute of Medicine report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, recognized the importance of patient-centeredness, listing it as one of six aims for health care improvement. The report described patient-centered care as "respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions." 1 A contemporary interpretation of this concern for patientcentered care is patients' engagement in their own health care: the idea that engaged, empowered patients are central to achieving better outcomes at a better value.The 2012 Institute of Medicine report Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America lists "engaged, empowered patients" as one of seven characteristics of an effective, efficient, and continuously improving health system. The report describes the ideal relationship between patients and providers in this way: "Clinicians supply information and advice based on their scientific expertise in treatment and intervention options, along with potential outcomes. Patients, their families, and other caregivers bring personal knowledge regarding the suitability-or lack thereof-of different treatments for the patient's circumstances and preferences. Information from both sources is needed to select the right care option." 2 For CEOs of health care organizations, the move toward engaging patients in their own care is not simply the right thing to do. It is quickly becoming the norm amid growing evidence that Patricia Gabow, the former CEO of the Denver Health and Hospital Authority, is a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Aurora.Gary Gottlieb is president and
