Patient-focused care: the systemic implications of change

Continuous quality improvement and customer identification have become pivotal concerns for modern management. It is evident that much past activity in health care has been narrowly focused, technologically based and of unknown efficiency. Identifying the patient as primary and overarching customer for health service organizations serves to simplify, refocus and redesign institutions so that resources and personnel are organized and allocated based on patient-care needs. Health care facilities can, accordingly, be ranked on the basis of their commitment and achievement with regard to patient-focused care. Quality becomes a matter of providing excellent and efficient medical care and satisfying the demands of the larger patient experience. Redefining the organization in the context of patient need profoundly changes the work place, creating less rigid, flattened organizational structures and emphasizing leadership rather than managerial activities.