With the increased use of technology, such as telehealth and remote patient monitoring, during the COVID-19 pandemic and the overall shift to electronic health records and predictive analytics in health care in recent years, caring for patients from an individual, human perspective, rather than from a numbers or data perspective, is becoming more important. How can patient-centered care have an impact on patients who have chronic conditions like kidney failure? Dr. Francesca Tentori, vice president of DaVita’s Outcomes Research and Patient Empowerment team, discusses this with Ben Brown, senior manager of DaVita Clinical Enterprise team in Denver, CO, in this podcast. While this podcast was recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national emergency in the United States, listen now to learn more about how integrated and coordinated care is delivered in DaVita centers.
Podcast Transcript:
Ben Brown (00:28): Hello and welcome to DaVita's Medical Insights podcast. My name is Ben Brown. I am a senior manager in DaVita's clinical enterprise team based in Denver, Colorado, and I'm excited to be joined on the phone today by Dr. Francesca Tentori, vice president of DaVita's outcomes research and patient empowerment team. Hi there, Francesca.
Dr. Tentori (00:49): Hi, Ben. It's good to be with you.
Ben Brown (00:51): Well, I'm excited to have you with us today to talk about patient-centered care. Can you talk a little bit about how you define patient-centered care and what that means to you and how do you see it come to life in our dialysis centers?
Dr. Tentori (01:04): Yes, definitely. So to start with, let me give you the definition that the Institute of Medicine has given us on what patient-centered care means. Obviously it's a term that we hear more and more. The official definition is providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs and values, and ensuring that patient values guide our clinical decision.
Dr. Tentori (01:35): And that's the part that is really exciting to me. So to me, patient-centered care means we provide care that aligns with each of our patient's needs, whether they're clinical or whether they are emotional. Obviously we're not always able to address all of their issues, but just awareness around what's important to each individual patient I think is a huge step. Obviously a challenging one, but I am very proud of the progress that is being made in this area, in medicine in general, and in dialysis in particular.
