A reader who works for a hospital system in the South writes in to stress that “patient-centered care,” the Luntz’d term I wrote about this morning, “actually means something specific to those of us who work in healthcare.
Actually the term has evolved into “patient and family-centered care” and it’s based on a set of clearly defined principles that have little to do with what type of insurance (if any) the patient has.
A crucial component of true patient- and family-centered care is the reimbursement model. The concept of physicians getting paid for the time they spend with families discussing end-of-life options got twisted by the GOP into “death panels” and the government “getting between doctors and their patients.” Nothing could have been further from the truth. It would have been a very good step toward PFCC.
There we have it. The term, as currently understood in politics, has morphed into “health care that you will own and enjoy, not like that nasty government-run stuff.”
