A Systematic Approach to Understanding and Implementing Patient-Centered Care

In 2014, Family Medicine for America's Health (FMAHealth) began implementing a specialty-wide strategic plan. The FMAHealth Board of Directors created an Engagement Tactic Team and charged the team with two major objectives: (1) to engage patients as partners in transforming primary care, and (2) to strengthen working alliances with other primary care professions and key stakeholders to speak with a unified voice for primary care. The team's first objective sought to engage patients as partners to achieve the triple aim. The second objective required the team to explore how best to collaborate with others to align on core values of high-functioning primary care.When it comes to realizing the promise of patient-centered care, aspirational strategic objectives are often easier to declare than to implement. As the team grappled with its charge, it discovered that the approach to achieving each objective became as important as the actions required to accomplish them. The team recognized the value of taking ample time to build an approach to delivering patient-centered care that could be sustained and scaled over time to achieve the two objectives.The team ultimately settled on three projects that leveraged collaborative partnerships with organizations inside and outside the specialty to better understand and advance patient-centered care at three levels: practice transformation, organizational governance, and policy making.