People-centred care empowers citizens and patients to take charge of their own health rather than being passive recipients of services. It consists of asking what matters to patients, providers, organisations, and systems, but always ensuring that patients are the final judges of value. Patients are thus fully involved in the decision-making, planning, development, and monitoring of their care.
Person-centred care strives to shape health policies and services around people and the communities they live in. It means treating people with dignity and respect, providing coordinated care, offering personalised care and enabling people to live an independent life. By prioritising the perspectives of individuals, families, communities, and society, person-centred care offers solutions to challenges that particularly affect patients with chronic or multimorbid conditions.
Health managers can lead a value shift in health systems and facilitate the implementation of person-centred care by designing health services with patients and around patient specific needs and experiences. They should adopt a holistic approach and expand their focus to also include the patient perspective in their decision-making. They should be aware of patients’ experience in accessing healthcare services at all levels.
The European Health Management Conference provides the opportunity to discuss how to manage the paradigm shift to people-centred care; what are the strategies to balance evidence-based health management and patient preferences; how to support multi-stakeholder partnerships that include patients; and what is needed at the policy level to enable this change.
People-centred systems is one of five topics that were identified to shape the EHMA 2024 conference programme. Tracks and topics have been selected in consultation with our Board of Directors, our Scientific Advisory Committee, and our membership.
Have you carried out research about models and processes to further the concept of people-centeredness? Would you be interested in sharing your results with the health management community?
Submit your abstract by Monday, 15 January 2024 at 10.00 (CET).
Check out the guidelines and submission form here: https://bit.ly/EHMA2024abstracts