Finishing the sixth annual Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) forum today, Chairman Tony Coelho took the time to discuss what he learned throughout the forum and how it contributes to PIPC’s primary objectives of patient-centered research.
The risks associated with qualifying “value” in health care are that “There is no algorithm for value to the patient,” Coelho told Patient Daily. “Current efforts to define value look at an algorithm of cost and clinical benefit often based on purely biological factors. Value to the patient is defined by achieving the outcomes that matter to patients, which are often a measure of their quality of life, like mobility and function, cognition, fatigue, dexterity, the ability to go to work or school, or the potential for long-term disability.”
Some ways the health care system can offer better value, while still respecting the diverse needs of patients, is “driven by achieving outcomes that matter to patients” and their diverse needs, Coelho said. “This simply requires that patients and providers have access to decision aids and shared decision-making tools that enable them to measure the impact of treatments on the various outcomes that matter to patients so they can choose the one that is right for the patient.”
"If value is driven by achieving outcomes that matter to patients, then we will have respected the diverse needs of patients," Corlho said. "If we see patients as one-size-fits-all, then we have failed the patient."
Coelho said that since its founding, PIPC has been at the forefront of patient-centeredness in comparative effectiveness research (CER). Having driven the concept of patient-centeredness in the conducting of research, PIPC looks forward to bringing patients' voice to the discussion of how to advance patient-centered principles throughout an evolving health care system.
