Ideal Patient-Centered Care Is Seamless, Supportive: Elizabeth Grush, MBA

Successful patient-centered care not only places patients in the center, taking into account their personal needs and goals, but it offers a sense of security for patients, explained Elizabeth Grush, MBA, vice president, health outcomes, Ochsner Health. In this interview with The American Journal of Managed Care®, Grush spoke more to the ideal vision behind patient-centered approaches and important considerations systems should account for if they pursue these models.

These topics, challenges facing the health care work force, and more were explored at a recent Institute for Value-Based Medicine event held in New Orleans, Louisiana.

This transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What does truly patient-centered care look like?

I would say in practice, there's a great deal of integration and collaboration between provider types. If you're addressing physical needs, that's likely one type of provider. If you're addressing social needs, that's a different type of provider.

I would say it looks like a lot of communication from the patient perspective. If it's working well, then it's seamless. And you transition from one provider type to another without feeling the complexity that's actually behind it. It's like a duck swimming in a pond. You can't see their little feet paddling, but they're moving along just fine. We don't want the patient to experience that kind of frenzy, but really just to feel like they're being taken care of in the most holistic and seamless way possible.

Where do you see the biggest gaps in patient-centered care today?

I think some of the biggest gaps today exist in understanding from a patient perspective what they really need, and giving them the chance to articulate what they really need. One example of patient-centered care might be in, say, the cancer department, where you've got your oncologist, and you've got the staff that support you with your chemotherapy and your radiation. But going through a treatment like that probably means you also need wigs or adaptive clothing, or maybe you need support with transportation and getting to all of your appointments, and effective patient-centered care would address all of those needs for the patient.

I do think that more of our historically disparately impacted community members likely would benefit most from patient-centered care, because they have more needs that need addressing. Often, they're likely to be sicker than other patients and, therefore, have more complex care that they need support navigating.