About Patient and Family Centered Care

Patient and Family Centered Care (PFCC) is about putting patients and families first by redesigning patient care so that medical resources and personnel are organized around the needs of patients and familes.

Benefits to All

PFCC results in efficient and easy to use care for patients, families, staff, physicians, and therefore benefits hospitals as well. Some of these global benefits include:

• Simplicity and ease of use leads to increased satisfaction and improved outcomes for patients and families
• Decreased complications, increased efficiencies, and higher patient satisfaction improve satisfaction for health care providers
• Increased job satisfaction for hospital employees
• Benefits for hospitals and administrators resulting from gained efficiencies, higher volume, satisfied doctors, nurses, staff, and employees, employee retention, and growth

History

The concept of patient and family centered care dates back to the 1950's and reemerged in the early 1990's. Much of the focus has been on quality and efficiency initiatives, such as TPS, TM, TQI, reengineering, etc... While all can be tools to focus on achieving patient and family centered care, they should not be the focus themselves. Quality and efficiencies are the results of PFCC approaches, however patient focused care is not necessarily a result of other quality and efficiency initiatives.