Doctor-patient relationship: A meaningful marriage

by Anthony Cirillo I recently returned from a trip to Ireland where we visited my wife's cousin, Father Sean, a Catholic priest in Northern Ireland. He is a great soul with a wonderful sense of humor. During the course of our many conversations, we asked him how he spent most of his time. His answer--hatchin, matchin, dispatchin! Hatchin meant the sacrament of Baptism for newborns. Matchin meant the sacrament of Matrimony. And dispatchin alluded to the funerals he performs. Of course that got me thinking about patient experience! (Really, you say!) Think about it. Before the emphasis on patient experience, value-based purchasing and HCAHPS chasing, healthcare providers were getting the experience of care right on both ends of the life spectrum--living and dying. We tackled the birth experience through the amenity pathway and backed into the more systemic issues over time. And hospice care providers were innovators in the experience movement well before it became fashionable. Let's move on to the "matchin" part. Of course, for Father Sean that was about marrying people, the ultimate relationship. For the purposes of this article, I'd like to think about it as the marrying of the provider/physician relationship to the consumer. As two recent JAMA studies showed, we have a long way to go. In one study, a survey of almost 22,000 admitted patients at the University of Chicago Medical Center found patient preference to participate in decision-making concerning their care wa...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs