Different Ways to Understand Patient-centered Health Law

Patient-centeredness cannot be all things to all people. The law, by its nature, decides between competing conceptions of what is right and what is just, and establishes these choices with the weight of law. At the outset of a project aimed at exploring whether health law might become more patient centered, it is tempting to seek consensus or to try to find broad agreement. But we may find that in law, in policy, and in practice, a narrowing of the definition of patient-centeredness might prove more useful and durable. Lines must be drawn, choices made, and terms defined. Too big a tent may prove too thin to cover anything of use. Patient-centeredness could migrate into something as vague as “caring” or as distant as an academic curiosity if it lacks the precision and coherence required for guiding actual decisions. I offer here a set of choices to consider.