In our September 10th, 2021 blog post we started to discuss how healthcare delivery in the United States is operating on a flawed, out-of-date, profit-driven system and subsequent harmful impacts to staff, patients and quality. It is evident that healthcare is in need of a new “Operating System (OS).” Despite the best intentions the way the current system is designed, patients and front-line staff will ultimately be the ones to draw the short end of the stick. Patients are especially susceptible to falling into gaps of care. Financial incentives focus on increasing standardization, efficiency, and elimination of waste. On paper these directives appear to be steps in the right direction. However, by narrowly focusing on these metrics we risk losing the humanistic-component of healthcare involving compassion, caring, and meeting the nuances of each individual's needs in their care. Cost-effectiveness, while important with rising healthcare costs, should not be the end all be all for determining a patient’s care. Instead it should be a meaningful consideration under a greater operating system of a patient-centered value system (PCVS).

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The goal of the PCVS is to facilitate a shift away from profit motives and to put patients at the center of all healthcare related decisions using the patient’s voice and autonomy as the driving force. Listen to Dr. DiGioia, the co-author of The Patient-Centered Value System: Transforming Healthcare Through Co-Design and co-founder of goShadow, walk through the new OS himself on the RelentlessHealthcare Podcast. According to Dr. DiGoia, there are numerous ways to work towards the ideal patient experience. Last month we dove into patient shadowing and using conversation tools such as “What Matters to You” to identify what patients value in their healthcare, and view the care experience through the patient’s eyes. This week we’ll look at Co-Design and team building, another PCVS asset.

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Co-Design is a framework for decision making whose key tenet is to share knowledge and power amongst decision-makers, and to use both professional experience and lived experiences to develop sustainable solutions. In healthcare, this means bringing patients into the fold and using their experiences to steer decision-making, because ultimately patients are the ones most impacted by these decisions. This can be done by engaging patients in meaningful conversations to glean “What Matters to Them” for their care, shadowing, including community members in decision-making, surveys, etc. The true healthcare end-users are patients and families, not providers nor insurance companies. To engage patients in the redesign of the healthcare delivery system as our end-user, we need to build a completely different team from our traditional care teams. A more comprehensive-care, integrated team that walks with patients through all their experiences leaving no stone unturned. To develop a healthcare model not for the patient but with the patient. 

As unwieldy and complicated as the health system is with its numerous stakeholders, functions, and minutiae, the patient is the only commonality within it all. No part of the healthcare system moves without the patient. Wouldn’t it make sense then for the patient to be the focal point for healthcare decisions? Installing PCVS as healthcare’s new OS has only one requirement: for EVERYONE to view healthcare through the eyes of the patients and their families, from C-suite execs to custodial staff. Healthcare is in desperate need of an anchor aside from profits to make meaningful changes and address the gaps of quality and accessibility.

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If you’re interested in learning more or want to install the Patient Centered Value System in your organization check out goShadow’s toolkits for shadowing and how you can ask “What Matters to You.” Also listen to Dr. DiGoia, as he goes into depth about the importance of shadowing (12:30 of the podcast) and WMTY/Co-Design (16:36).