1 interactions with health professionals and providing feedback that strengthens the relationship and their mutual understanding of the patient's needs and how they may best be addressed. Strong primary care, the care setting focused on in this paper, is critical to achieving better patient outcomes, especially as the prevalence of multiple chronic health conditions increases (AHRQ, 2014a). More than 75 percent of U.S. health care spending is devoted to treating persons with chronic conditions (CDC, 2009). Of course, specialists and subspecialists also play very important roles. The complexity of care and services often required today requires health professionals across the system to work with people in a coordinated, collaborative way and to consider the whole person-not just the condition or array of conditions that a person might have (Bodenheimer et al., 2002). All patients bring unique expertise regarding their preferences, skills, knowledge, and experiences into a potential relationship with a health care team. Patients-and, often, their families and caregivers-live with their conditions and symptoms 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Patients are experts in knowing how they feel from moment to moment and day to day. However, not all patients are well informed about their medical conditions and how best to manage them (Fagerlin et al., 2010). Relatively few come to medical encounters with the same technical skills, clinical knowledge, and detailed understanding of the health care system that most clinicians have. Some patients prefer to be involved at a more detailed level, others less so (Alston et al., 2012). But many patients and family members have acquired, and many more are capable of developing, considerable knowledge, skills, and confidence in decision making that could influence their outcomes positively-especially those outcomes that matter most to them. Only recently, with increased attention on patient-centered care at the practice level, has it become evident that a large percentage of patients who have personal physicians and, especially minorities, do not have an effective health care team (Beal et al., 2007). When people have a personal physician and an effective practice team, their outcomes are better (Beal et al., 2007; Havyer et al., 2014). There is still much to learn about the practical realities of patients becoming true partners in their care, and the most effective teachers will be patients themselves. When patients and clinicians have an effective partnership, the relationship becomes more fluid. It transcends the traditional roles of learner and teacher, leader and follower. Valid, ongoing assessments of team functioning and performance, including assessments by patients themselves, will be important to identify and illuminate team functioning and the strength of the partnership with patients, and to inform improvement efforts so that demonstrably better patient outcomes can be achieved consistently. Methods Given the scope of the project, an early decision of the authors was to divi...
