Chester County Medicine Summer 2018 - 30

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THE FIRST NEW NORMAL:
PATIENTS AT THE CENTER
This dynamic is creating a new normal. Many healthcare
organizations are not keeping pace with changing patient demands
and dynamics, and find themselves behind in meeting patient expectations. There is a need to focus on redefining patient relationships and transforming the professional and organizational culture
towards a model that puts the patient at the core of healthcare
delivery.

CHANGING DEMANDS
With the changing dynamics in healthcare, patients are voicing
new demands. Patients are, in most cases, like any other consumer
because they are. Patients as consumers want, and some regulatory
bodies mandate, choice, timeliness and personalization. Just as
consumers can choose their airline seats in a moment, patients can
also now select their providers within insurance coverage guidelines. ZocDoc, for example, is an online booking system where
patients can choose the doctor and book their appointments at the
patient's convenience and choice.
Patients want and need healthcare providers to know who
they are. Consumer-driven programs from Amazon.com and
JetBlue can remember preferences and anticipate customers' needs
and wants. In healthcare, patients expect that their needs will
be remembered; information stored in healthcare records will be
available to their healthcare team so that a patient doesn't have to
answer the same questions over and over again. None of this negates, of course, the role ofthe patient-physician relationship. This
is paramount to a patient's need for personalization and that their
physician takes the time to know and connect to the patient.

the patient. This means using insights and data from and about
patients to define the care delivery processes. This data now has to
be understood in a rich, contextual way.

HOW TO PLACE THE PATIENT AT THE CENTER
An initial step in the process of becoming a patient-centric
organization is to assess your current values, policies, and practices
as they relate to putting the patient first. Enhancing the patient
experience by delivering patient-centric care is on the agenda of
virtually every hospital today. While hospital performance on national patient experience surveys gains greater public attention and
is increasingly tied to financial rewards, the pathway for improvement is far from clear.

THE LIFECARE MOVEMENT
LifeCare Health Partners, headquartered in Plano, Texas,
operates 23 hospitals in nine states. All hospitals in the LifeCare
Family are accredited by the Joint Commission and Medicare
certified. Each hospital in the LifeCare Family of Hospitals proves
a unique healing environment dedicated to the treatment of medically complex patients. Our hospital is located at 400 E. Marshall
in West Chester, PA.
All of us in the network embrace a common core set of values.
Our values encompass who we are as an organization and are a
guide to how we operate with one another and the patients we care
for. They also reflect "how we show up" and what is important to
us as a company.

To meet these new demands, healthcare organizations must
fundamentally reorganize themselves from patriarchal, non-flexible, and non-responsive models of care delivery to patient-focused
ones.

WHAT IS A PATIENT-CENTRIC HEALTHCARE
DELIVERY CULTURE?
Patient-centric culture is an architectural configuration of
values, tasks, functions, policies, and practices that puts the patient
at the core.
It is the foundational platform on which strategy, structure,
processes, technology, and people function to create an organization that focuses on patients in their end-to-end journey. Patient
centricity is also a mindset that is infused throughout the organization, from the board members to the housekeeper. Patient centricity is less about implementing a vision and more about building
a cadence of energy that focuses on the patient's journey through
illness and wellness.
The core of the patient-centric approach is defining everything the healthcare organization is doing in terms of their client,

30 CHESTER COUNT Y Medicine | SUMMER 2018

MEET LINDA B., a 69-year-old female who had been
hospitalized for 3 weeks at a local hospital, where she developed
complications from ulcerative colitis and diverticulitis with
possible megacolon. During a sigmoidoscopy, Linda vomited,
aspirated, developed severe respiratory distress and was placed on a
ventilator. Additionally, she became hypotensive and was in septic
shock. Improvement started slowly but she was not able to be
weaned from the ventilator at the local hospital and Linda came
to us this past summer. This is where her journey to real improvement started. Our expert team was able to successfully wean Linda

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Chester County Medicine Summer 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chester County Medicine Summer 2018