Person‐Centered Care: A Definition and Essential Elements

Improving healthcare safety, quality, and coordination, as well as quality of life, are important aims of caring for older adults with multiple chronic conditions and/or functional limitations. Person‐centered care is an approach to meeting these aims, but there are no standardized, agreed‐upon parameters for delivering such care. The SCAN Foundation charged a team from the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) in collaboration with a research and clinical team from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California to provide the evidence base to support a definition of person‐centered care and its essential elements. An interprofessional panel of experts in person‐centered care principles and practices that the AGS convened developed this statement.     

Moving Toward Implementation of Person‐Centered Care for Older Adults in Community‐Based Medical and Social Service Settings: “You Only Get Things Done When Working in Concert with Clients”

Specialized, fragmented acute care is not aligned optimally to serve older adults. Person‐centered care (PCC) has emerged as an evidence‐based solution that involves enlisting patients as partners in treatment planning. Although several efforts have captured person‐centered voices in outpatient care, more information is needed at the organizational and provider level to better understand the feasibility, challenges, and effect of PCC in community‐based and social services settings. To assess themes and emerging trends, researchers conducted telephone interviews with leaders at nine organizations providing PCC for older adults. Questions were focused on the legacy of PCC services, whether and how PCC was connected to better quality care, and what tools were used for measuring PCC. Three themes on PCC for older adults emerged. (1) Each organization ascribed to a unique definition and operational structure for PCC. (2) Despite these differences, all organizations specified a strong commitment to PCC. Most noted financial resources and staffing as challenges and opportunities affecting feasibility. (3) Terms such as “patient‐centered” care and other PCC synonyms may warrant greater clarification, because ideological differences set these classifications apart. Results from this analysis indicate the lack of a single, established definition for PCC. As interest in and support for PCC mounts, organizations in outpatient medical and community‐based settings clearly have undertaken individual efforts to interpret what PCC is and how to provide it. Interview responses reflect this inconsistency, highlighting how staff and financing in particular can bolster or burden the PCC paradigm and what a consensus definition could do for the field.     

An update on the pilot trial of consumer‐directed care for older persons in Australia

The Australian Government has commenced a two‐year pilot of consumer‐directed care (CDC) across 500 home and community aged care packages. This policy paper discusses the model being trialled in Australia in light of the UK's Individual Budgets' Pilot Programme and the USA's Cash and Counselling Demonstration. The results of these randomised controlled studies suggest that older people vary in their preferences for consumer direction and that many find the administrative tasks of implementing CDC programs difficult. The relatively restricted model of CDC that the Australian Government is trialling may minimise the problems encountered in the overseas programs, but does not allow consumers to hire family or friends which they preferred to do overseas.     

Stages of change for the component behaviors of advance care planning

OBJECTIVES: To develop stages‐of‐change measures for advance care planning (ACP), conceptualized as a group of interrelated but separate behaviors, and to use these measures to characterize older persons' engagement in and factors associated with readiness to participate in ACP. DESIGN: Observational cohort study. SETTING: Community. PARTICIPANTS: Persons aged 65 and older recruited from physician offices and a senior center. MEASUREMENTS: Stages of change for six ACP behaviors: completion of a living will and healthcare proxy, communication with loved ones regarding use of life‐sustaining treatments and quantity versus quality of life, and communication with physicians about these same issues. RESULTS: Readiness to participate in ACP varied widely across behaviors. Whereas between approximately 50% and 60% of participants were in the action or maintenance stage for communicating with loved ones about life‐sustaining treatment and completing a living will, 40% were in the precontemplation stage for communicating with loved ones about quantity versus quality of life, and 70% and 75% were in the precontemplation stage for communicating with physicians. Participants were frequently in different stages for different behaviors. Few sociodemographic, health, or psychosocial factors were associated with stages of change for completing a living will, but a broader range of factors was associated with stages of change for communication with loved ones about quantity versus quality of life. CONCLUSION: Older persons show a range of readiness to engage in different aspects of ACP. Individualized assessment and interventions targeted to stage of behavior change for each component of ACP may be an effective strategy to increase participation in ACP.