This week I attended an interesting event: “A UK vision for ‘Patient-Centric’ Care”, organised by The Economist and electronics giant Phillips. This featured eminent academics, doctors, civil servants (and employees of Phillips) to discuss their views of what’s wrong with the NHS, what could be done to improve it and who to blame on its current state. The obvious buzz word was ‘patient-centric care’, though non of the participants were actually able to tell the audience what that means. The resident cardiologist on the panel, a chap from the North East of England, thought it means providing patients with (obviously Phillips made) home monitoring systems, because ‘primary care is particularly bad at communicating with secondary care’. There should also be more use of ‘neighbourhood monitoring’ and utilising the ‘patients as the workforce’. GP’s were singled out once more when we were told that ‘primary care is not penetrating hypertension’.
Well, I am used to GP bashing. While I was not aware that we are particularily bad at communicating with our hospital colleages, my impression has always been that my colleagues in secondary are not particularly keen on our views anyway, but I might be horribly wrong. ‘Neighborhood monitoring’ happens everywhere and everyday in the UK. There are thousands of people who are looking out for a vulnerable person living next door, making sure that they take their medication, driving them to the doctor and checking whether they are well. There is nothing new about this. It’s part of the human condition.
After 6 hours of discussion, there was still no consensus of what ‘patient centric’ actually is (apart from home monitoring), but it really is so easy: involve the patient in the decision making of the management of his particular problem, give him/her the chance to raise all the concerns and worries he might have and make sure that you explain everything that involves his or her care.
There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?