Legal governance to enable person-centred care
Short description
Distinctive for the project is to see healthcare as a legal governance system. The starting point is the construction of roles for those part of the system, meaning the practical order of the system divided into governance systems tied to roles and actors operating in the system. We start with the legal status of the patient role, to then problematize what it means for the healthcare system as an organization and governance system. The starting point is the needs, position and “rights” of the patient, without turning to patients as a target group. The project instead turns to everyone who is responsible for, and operates within, the healthcare system. How can we together develop a continuously improving and person-centred system with the capapbility to ensure patients needs; an equal system where everyone is met and treated equally.
The purpose of the research project is to contribute to the “enabling” of a person-centred healthcare system. The main task of the project is to evaluate the healthcare system as a legal governance system. We are especially interested in how norms of person-centric care and also equal care can be understood as two foundations in healthcare as a governance system. Focus is thereby placed on the needs, position and “rights” of the patients in a system context. We take a starting point in an analysis of the legal status and competence of the patient, as expressed in the Patient Act and other legal sources, to thereafter evaluate how this status and competence is realized in the healthcare system as a legal governance system.
When we analyze healthcare as a governance system, we relate to central roles of the system:
- The role of the patient – what is the status/competence of the patient and which claims can the patient make in relation to the healthcare system?
- The roles of the care professionals – which responsibilities and obligations follows the role of the medical doctor, nurse, etc., and what does it mean to provide/develop a professional work effort that fulfills patient needs and is person centric?
- The role of the care provider – which responsibilities and obligations follows the role of the operational management och what does it mean to provide/develop an organisation that fulfills patient needs and is person-centric?
- The role of the principal/organiser of the healthcare system - which responsibilities and obligations follows the role of the regional principal/organiser and what does it mean, as a representative for the region, to enable and organise healthcare that fullfills patient needs and is person centric?
To concretize our analysis of healthcare as a governance system, we define separate care processes, for example: examination and testing, diagnosis, handling and prescription of medical drugs, surgery, and other treatment, long-term treatment and rehabilitation.