In the US, they’ve set up a research institute, The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, with a funding of $600 million a year!
It’s good to see a resourced emphasis on patients. The current dominant model in decision making in health care policy often seems to put the average, or the group, over that of the person. The evidence based medicine model originally recommended taking the statistical results from group experiments, then working out with individual patients what is best for them. I’ve heard a doctor say she was taught that if a patient takes an evidence based drug and says she is no better, then either she hasn’t taken the drug, or she is lying. That strikes me as bonkers. One way to get a more relevant decision for individual patients is to use “patient centred outcomes”.
The new US research institute will focus on the following four questions –
1. “Given my personal characteristics, conditions and preferences, what should I expect will happen to me?”
2. “What are my options and what are the benefits and harms of those options?”
3. “What can I do to improve the outcomes that are most important to me?”
4. “How can the health care system improve my chances of achieving the outcomes I prefer?”
Shouldn’t these ALWAYS be the questions a doctor and a patient should consider together? I think so.
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