Something of a contrarian article from Anthony Cirillo over at Hospital Impact that addresses how successful person-/patient-centered care is. In his estimation, the move to patient-centered care has been an unsuccessful one. He cites a culture change, the nature of the the profession, and the built environment as reasons for the movements lack of success. Obviously, this is in pretty stark opposition to much of the literature we run here at HCD, but is an interesting viewpoint. His comments on the built environment, however, seem to indicate a lack of understanding of the current healthcare design landscape:

Create a context so that the healthcare worker understands the feeling that needs to be achieved with any experience. For example, when a pain management specialist looks to achieve comfort as opposed to pain management, they see the patient’s world in a new lens. Yes it’s about clinical care, but it also is about the environment–what are people looking at when receiving pain medication?; what colors and smells surround them? etc. You don’t have to make a list for the pain management person to do this. Once they understand, they will be empowered with great ideas to achieve the desired state.

There’s a fairly even split in the discussion that arose from his essay—and during this discussion, he restates that it may not be a function of patient-centered care not working, but rather it not being widely adopted—but I’d be interested to see what our readers think about his view. Give it a read and let me know your thoughts on the effect and prevalence of patient-centered care