Identifying Canadian patient-centred care measurement practices and quality indicators: a survey

Abstract

I n recent years, health care systems around the world have adopted patient-centred care as a model to improve quality of care. 1 A breadth of evidence has demonstrated that patient-centred care improves patient outcomes and experiences; 2-4 interactions and communication between patients, families and their health care providers; 5-12 and health care provider satisfaction. Further, patient-centred care has been shown to reduce health care utilization and costs while maintaining high-quality care. 13-15 The Institute of Medicine's Crossing the Quality Chasm report (2001) identified patientcentred care as 1 of 6 aims to achieve high-quality health care and defined it as "providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions." 16 Quality indicators can play an important role in informing health care providers, organizations and policy-makers on the quality of care, enabling them to make comparisons (benchmarking) across time and various contexts and helping them to set priorities. 17 The need for quality indicators for patient-centred care is acknowledged by the World Health Organization: "as of yet there are no universally accepted indicators to measure progress in establishing integrated people-centred health services." 18 Thus, there is a need to ensure that patient-centred quality indicators reflect the patient perspective: What matters most to the patients with regard to the health care that they receive?

Patient healthcare experiences in the Northwest Territories, Canada: an analysis of news media articles

“…Although previously there were efforts to measure patient healthcare experience in the NWT, recently the territorial government began using online patient surveys to seek feedback related to satisfaction, treatment, preventative health, and safety[ 37 ]. This is an important step that can be complemented by methods such as in-depth interviews and focus groups to better capture diverse and nuanced patient experiences [ 20 ] which are more specific and fundamental to patient care in northern Indigenous contexts.…”

Improving the quality of person-centred healthcare from the patient perspective: development of person-centred quality indicators

“…In parallel to the scoping review, 19 an environmental scan was conducted to identify whether healthcare systems in Canada, the UK, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand were using PC-QIs, which PC-QIs were in use, and how they were implemented. 20 These countries were chosen as they shared many similarities with respect to healthcare delivery and structures. 20 Sixty-one existing indicators were identified.…”

“… 20 These countries were chosen as they shared many similarities with respect to healthcare delivery and structures. 20 Sixty-one existing indicators were identified. All unique PC-QIs identified through the scoping review and environmental scan were synthesised by the research team.…”

Commentary: Recognising patient preparation to improve patient‐centred care for diverse populations

“…3 Patient-centred care quality metrics have, however, been elusive; though many indicators are described by health care organisations as informing practices, most are guidelines or recommendations under development and not actually implemented. 4,5 In this issue, Koopman et al 6 report a Canadian qualitative study of how patients with chronic disease shape the stories they tell health care providers. They argue that focusing on physician-patient encounters fails to consider the important and time-consuming, but invisible, preparatory work patients strategically perform on their overall health journeys between episodic encounters.…”

“…To operationalise this, focus has typically been on physician–patient encounters, with emphasis on physicians exploring patients' concerns, understanding patients as whole people, shared decision‐making, and physician–patient relationships 3 . Patient‐centred care quality metrics have, however, been elusive; though many indicators are described by health care organisations as informing practices, most are guidelines or recommendations under development and not actually implemented 4,5 …”