The traditional “bio-medical model” for health care is insufficient to provide a good quality of care since it only focuses on the disease rather than the person with disease.  With the advancement in the science and technology, and the growing population of patients with chronic conditions, a new system thinking on the concept of people centred care in public health and health care systems should be applied.  It emphasizes on patient safety, adherence to care plans, treatment and health outcomes, satisfaction with care, quality of care, and empowerment of patients, individual, family and community.

This system approach includes different focuses ranging from individual level to organizational & systems level.  The individual level encompasses doctor-patient relationship, collaborative definition of problem, and supporting patient self-care whereas the organizational level & systems level includes multidisciplinary approach, coordination and integration of care, redesigning the systems to ensure accessibility and sustainability.

To promote person-centered care, we have put an effort in the areas of promoting routine patient data collection to identify the needs in both medical and social sectors, advocating choice for self-care management (e.g. healthcare voucher, community voucher, HPV self-sampling), engaging patient, families and healthcare workforce at multiple levels, etc.

This short video indicates one of the important elements for Patient-centre care – Connection. Let’s think how to improve the quality of care in healthcare system. Click here.