"Relationship" new buzzword in patient-centered care

Advocates say focusing on how patients, caregivers and physicians interact could lead to better outcomes.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Jan. 16, 2006.

When Anthony Suchman, MD, an internist in Rochester, N.Y., helped found the Highland Physicians Organization in the mid-1990s, he applied a relationship-centered philosophy -- prioritizing building strong partnerships between physicians, office staff, patients and family members -- to all of the enterprise's endeavors. He used this approach in developing practice guidelines, in the negotiation of contracts and even in budget discussions.

Through this experience he concluded that this approach led to less rivalry between specialists and primary care physicians than he has experienced elsewhere. In addition, there was a higher level of satisfaction among patients and all involved in their care.

"We were paying attention to the process of how people were working together," said Dr. Suchman, also the chair of the board of the American Academy on Physician and Patient, a medical society dedicated to patient-physician communication.

Dr. Suchman is one of a growing number of physicians advocating that the health care system step beyond patient-centeredness, which has been the focus of efforts to improve medical care in recent years. The American Medical Association's Ethical Force Program, for instance, runs a patient-centered communication initiative that aims to provide self-assessment kits for group practices and hospitals to determine how well physicians and other health care professionals deal with cultural competency, language barriers, health literacy and cross-cultural communication.