In October, Chan Soon-Shiong Medical Center at Windber is joining hospitals and health-care organizations around the world in commemorating Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month. The event is sponsored and coordinated by Planetree, a not-for-profit organization partnering with health-care organizations to advance patient-centered approaches to care.
Patient-centered care strives to personalize, humanize and demystify the health-care experience by recognizing patients as essential partners in their own care, empowering them with information, promoting effective communication between patients and providers and encouraging involvement of family and friends.
We want patients, whether inpatient or outpatient, to expect ample information about their own health status and treatment. And we want them to expect that when they go home, they will feel prepared to confidently manage their health-care needs.
This month gives us an opportunity to reinforce to our patients and their families what they can anticipate from us as a patient-centered hospital.
Windber Medical Center has been a Planetree member for 12 years and re-mains the only Planetree hospital within all of Pennsylvania. Additionally, we have achieved the “gold standard” as a Planetree Designated Hospital, one of only 10 such hospitals in the world, by demonstrating excellence with advanced patient-centered criteria.
Throughout October, we will be displaying a proclamation that we have received from Gov. Ed Rendell.
In it, Rendell states that he joins with Windber Medical Center in recognizing October 2010 as Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month and further asks all citizens to take steps to become more publish partners in their health care.