A person-focused model of care for the twenty-first century: a system-of-systems perspective

The US health care system is challenged to provide high-quality care and is burdened with unsustainable expenditures, making it difficult for health care participants (patients, payers, providers, caregivers) to create value. This communication presents the theoretical foundation for a person-focused model of care that addresses a number of these challenges. The model integrates aspects of prior models of chronic care with new empiric findings and complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The model emphasizes the relationship among all health care stakeholders. The health care delivery process is examined in terms of the role of each stakeholder and the value each adds to and receives from the process. The authors present pilot results illustrating the implications of CAS theory in regard to multi-morbidity, disease management programs, multi-morbid households, and person- and household-focused care. The model incorporates the physical, mental, and social dimensions of health, and operationalizes an individual patient's health as a CAS, identifying CASs for each of the other stakeholders as well. Health care can then be conceptualized as a system-of-systems with a person's health as its output. Deploying the model need not require major infrastructure investments or changes. It can be implemented by repurposing, aligning, and better integrating currently available interventions. The authors believe that the model creates not only survival value (health) but also purposeful value. The model offers a unifying focus for all participants in the health care delivery process, thereby constructing a health care system that is structurally person-focused and meaningful for all participants.