WORKSHOP 4

Power to the people: Re-imagining health systems with people at their centre

Wednesday, 4 October 2017 | 18.00-19.30 | Room 1

Organised by acumen public affairs

Breakthrough treatments have changed patients’ expectations of the care they receive, and we are getting better at understanding complex diseases. Nevertheless, and despite strong and universal European health systems, poor people were 10 times more likely than rich people to report unmet medical needs for financial reasons in 2014, and health budgets are struggling to cope with the simultaneous pressures of an ageing population with multiple chronic diseases and new high-cost treatments. Commonwealth Fund data shows that in seven high income countries at least one in four high-need adults experience poorly coordinated care. More worrying still, high-need adults express low-levels of confidence in the care provided to them: in six high income countries, more than 10% of high-need adults thought that a mistake had been made in their treatment or care in the previous two years.

Action to address these shortcomings should draw from the concept of person-centred care, so that health systems can deliver what matters most to patients. Patients and providers need to be equipped with the right skills and infrastructure to take advantage of new technologies, and there needs to be a broadly held understanding of what matters to people in their healthcare experiences and outcomes. Health systems will only yield the expected high-quality outcomes when they are truly person-centred – but how to achieve this goal remains a hotly debated topic in the global health systems discourse.

In this highly interactive session, participants will have the chance to articulate a working definition of “person-centred healthcare”, which will form the basis of group work led by experts representing the major health systems components central to re-centring the system on people, rather than the clinician or the hospital. Panellists will discuss the most pressing issues and recommendations towards achieving people-centred healthcare systems, reflecting and reacting directly to audience feedback and input.

W4 Programme PDF