Narrowing the gap between organisational demands and the quest for patient involvement: The case for coordinated care pathways

To improve healthcare, we currently observe two major developments. On the one hand, there is an increasing emphasis on including the patients’ perspective, for example in treatment decision making, during development of clinical guidelines and evaluation of care delivery services. On the other hand, healthcare providers are moving towards evidence-based care and standardising operating procedures, exemplified by the development of documented coordinated care pathways. These pathways typically focus on organisational and system requirements, which usually do not refer to patient involvement, nor indicate the need to be sensitive to differing patient needs. As a result, the structured process of developing and documenting care pathways seems to be at odds with the call to personalise care around the needs and preferences of the individual patient. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the conspicuous mismatch and show promising opportunities to address it.