Patient-Centered Care: The Key to Performance Excellence

Published in Member Communities on October 10, 2024

By Jim Chiakulas, Sen. Director of Strategic Initiatives, Brightree

In today’s evolving healthcare landscape, DME providers are faced with an increased shift and focus towards patient-centered care—a model that prioritizes the individual needs, preferences, and values of patients in the planning, coordination, and delivery of care.

Unlike traditional models, patient-centered care takes a holistic view of a patient’s health, circumstances, and well-being to meet each patient’s goals and needs to maintain or improve their health. The individual is at the center of care delivery and the patient’s voice is heard and informs care throughout all interactions within the health care system.

In this transformative environment, DME providers have the opportunity to embrace and integrate patient-centered care principles into their practices. By doing so, DME providers enhance their opportunity of creating superior outcomes, improving patient satisfaction, and achieving operational excellence.

This approach fosters a deeper connection between patients and DME providers and aligns with the healthcare industry’s ongoing movement towards value-based care and alternate payment models that can result in reduced expenses and improved financial margins.

Moreover, adopting a patient-centered care mindset is crucial for DME providers to remain relevant and competitive in an increasingly patient-focused healthcare system.

Core Principles of Patient-Centered Care

Core principles of patient-centered care include, but are not limited to:

Respecting the Individual: It is important to get to know the patient as a person and recognize their unique qualities values, beliefs, and perspectives. It also means maintaining their dignity and avoiding embarrassment or shaming. Patients should be treated with empathy, respect, and compassion.

Coordination and Integration of Care: Ensuring that care is coordinated across different healthcare settings and providers. This helps to prevent fragmented care and ensures that patients receive comprehensive services.

Involvement of Family and Friends: Encouraging and facilitating the involvement of family members and friends in the patient’s care, as appropriate. This can provide additional support and enhance the patient’s experience and outcomes.

Patient-centered care is grounded in the principle that healthcare should be tailored to the unique needs of each patient, involving them as active participants in their own health decisions. This approach not only enhances patient satisfaction but also leads to better health outcomes and more efficient use of healthcare resources.

How Can the DME Industry Lead the Way in the Adoption of Patient-Centered Care?

The prevailing fee-for-service (FFS) environment is not conducive to patient-centered care. In this model, providers are compensated based on the quantity and types of services provided.

In contrast, patient-centered payments focus on aligning the reimbursement structures with the needs, preferences, and outcomes of patients, rather than simply on the volume or cost of equipment provided.

Given the ongoing trend toward value-based and alternate payment models (APMs), where reimbursement is directly tied to the effectiveness of DME products and performance, this presents a clear opportunity to demonstrate that DME innovations, creativity, and focus on core patient-centered values not only work but are cost-effective too.

Various methods on how DMEs can adopt and successfully implement patient-centered care include:

• Enhancing Patient Outcomes: Tailor equipment choices to encourage the selection of DME that best fits the individual patient’s needs, preferences, and lifestyle. This can lead to enhanced compliance and utilization, resulting in better outcomes and higher patient satisfaction.
• Cost Efficiency: Properly selected and utilized DME can prevent complications and hospital readmissions, which are costly and subject to penalty. Investing in appropriate DME can support preventive care strategies, potentially reducing the need for more expensive treatments and interventions in the future.
• Facilitating Home-Based Care: Support the delivery of home health services, making it easier for patients to receive care in their homes, which is more convenient, less stressful, and more cost-effective.
• Increasing Access to Care: DME companies can streamline delivery services by providing prompt and efficient delivery to ensure that patients receive their equipment quickly, minimizing wait times and providing timely access to necessary equipment. Further, DMEs can offer support by working with insurance providers to help patients obtain necessary equipment with minimal out-of-pocket costs, making the equipment more accessible and affordable. This support ensures that financial barriers do not prevent patients from obtaining the equipment they need.
• Support for Chronic Conditions: DMEs can help manage chronic illnesses through support and oversight of devices such as CPAP machines for sleep apnea, nebulizers for respiratory conditions, and dialysis machines for kidney disease that help patients manage chronic conditions effectively at home. In addition, remote monitoring devices, such as blood pressure monitors, glucose meters, and heart rate monitors allows patients to track their health metrics and share data with their healthcare providers for continuous care management allowing for proactive management of chronic conditions.

• Adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Decision Support Systems (DSS): AI and DSS can play a crucial role in enhancing patient-centered care by improving communication, coordination, access to information, and patient engagement, resulting in maximized operational efficiency and business outcomes.

What are the Benefits of Patient-Centered Care?

There are numerous benefits to adopting a patient-centered care model.

Benefits for Patients

A patient-centered model helps patients feel listened to and cared for rather than automatically referred for further tests or treatment. The model shifts the focus away from metrics that measure only the success of a specific treatment and toward patients’ overall evaluation of the care they received.

It has been shown that patients who receive patient-centered care tend to have better health outcomes than those who do not. This is partly because the continuity of care that is essential to providing patient-centered care enables physicians to pay better attention to a patient’s overall health and well-being.

Benefits for Practitioners

The patient-centered care model benefits healthcare practitioners by allowing them to spend more time with patients. Centering care on patients can facilitate more individualized treatments that benefit practitioners as well as patients. By taking a patient-centered approach, the patient’s likelihood of getting better increases, and practitioners experience a higher level of satisfaction and joy in taking care of their patients within a value-based care framework.

Benefits for Healthcare Systems

The patient-centered model benefits the whole healthcare system by improving efficiency, reducing costs, and improving patient and provider satisfaction. These measures are consistent and align with Quadruple Aim, which is the north star of the healthcare system.

By focusing on simpler solutions first, it can reduce the need for unnecessary tests and hospital referrals. This helps reduce the widespread practice of over-testing, and aligning care with patient needs can lead to more efficient use of healthcare resources and lower overall costs.

Is Patient-Centered Care Achievable and How?

Patient-centered care is not only achievable but also essential for modern healthcare systems. Implementing patient-centered care requires a commitment to changing practices and mindsets across healthcare organizations.

Here are factors to help ensure patient-centered care can be effectively achieved:

Leadership Commitment: Healthcare leaders must create a clear vision and strategic plan that prioritizes patient-centered care. This includes setting goals, allocating resources, and establishing accountability measures. Further, leaders need to foster a culture that values and promotes patient-centered care and one that recognizes and rewards staff who demonstrate these values.

Training and Supporting Healthcare Providers: Offering professional development focusing on communication skills, cultural competence, and patient engagement techniques. Additionally, creating a supportive environment that allows healthcare providers to spend adequate time with patients, listen to their concerns, and involve them in care decisions. 

Focusing on Quality Improvement: Developing and tracking quality metrics related to patient-centered care, such as patient outcomes, satisfaction scores, readmission rates, and adherence to treatment plans. 

Enhancing Communication: Developing multidisciplinary care teams that work collaboratively to manage and coordinate patient care across different settings and specialties. Implementing electronic health records (EHRs) and other health IT systems that facilitate the sharing of patient information.

Fostering a patient-centered care model is a challenging but attainable goal and requires a fundamental shift in how healthcare is delivered. It involves redesigning care processes to ensure they are flexible and responsive to individual patient needs and incorporating shared decision-making practices.

DME providers are an indispensable support structure within the healthcare landscape. By prioritizing patient needs, fostering a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and leveraging technology, DMEs can provide care that is truly centered around the patient.

Therefore, by placing patients at the heart of their healthcare delivery, DME providers can accelerate patient-centered care adoption and help create a transformative approach that has the potential to create a more humane, effective, and sustainable healthcare system.

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This article was originally featured in the VGM Playbook: Boosting Results in Patient-Centered Homecare. To read the full article and more like this, download your copy of the playbook today! 

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