Patients Know Best

Patients Know Best: "Policy makers are freezing or shrinking health care budgets. They simply cannot sustain the increases in spending of the last decade and instead they are demanding that providers of care do more with less. So your institution has to become more efficient.

At the same time, patients are increasing their demands for control. The switch from paternalistic medicine – where clinicians decided and patients obeyed – to participatory medicine – where clinician and patient decide together how to improve the patient’s health – means big changes in the culture of health care.

But putting patients in control is the key to increasing efficiency. In retail, banking, travel and other industries putting the customer in control improved the quality and the costs of serving the customer. And so it will be in health care. The organisations that help the patient to help themselves will be the ones that succeed."