New South Wales mounts "patient based care" challenge.

The principles of patient centred care and the mantra of “nothing about me without me” have gained broad support, but its proving hard to adopt and embed them in routine practice. New ways of thinking and tackling resistance to change are needed, and a range of initiatives are being pursued. We describe the approach being taken in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, with 7.4 million residents and 1.66million public hospital admissions a year. This has focused on the development of a “patient based care challenge” aimed at spurring system-wide integrated change to promote patient centred care. The term patient based care was introduced with the aim of making patient centred care more broadly recognised as everyone’s responsibility—from the executive through to frontline clinicians and staff—with care systems included as well as bedside care. We discuss how the health districts have responded to this challenge. Strategic and organisational change