Patient Centered Care in Correctional Practice

Course overview

The concept of patient-centered care was originally described in Crossing the Quality Chasm, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on health care quality as "providing care that is respective of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decision". This is a difficult proposition in a secure environment where health care is not a primary goal, and is predominantly provider-centered and episodic in nature. Correctional patients are generally not trusted to be a part of the health care team - and certainly not the center of it. Yet the principles of patient-centered care, when applied in this setting, have opportunity to greatly decrease clinical error and increase compliance with the treatment plan.