On the Road to Patient Centeredness: Comment on: “Communication and Medication Refill Adherence”

With the publication of Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) enshrined patient centeredness as 1 of 6 distinct dimensions of health care quality.¹ In the subsequent decade, patient centeredness gained acceptance as a quality dimension among patients and health care providers, but broad agreement on how to measure patient centeredness and its impact on health outcomes has lagged.² If you ask most health system administrators to define patient centeredness, they would likely invoke Justice Potter Stewart by answering “I can't define patient centeredness, but I know it when I see it.” As a result, hospitals routinely advertise a “patient-centered approach” to care without actually communicating specific attributes that confirm their patient centeredness or demonstrate how patient centeredness leads to better patient experiences or outcomes.³