About Us

Our Mission

The Center for Patient Partnerships helps patients with life threatening or serious chronic illness make informed decisions and get the health care they need and deserve. It provides information and services that are intended to empower the patient. The Center is an advocate for patient choices and preferences with health care providers, insurers, and other parties.

The Need

People from all walks of life face challenges within the U.S. health care system. The Center for Patient Partnerships has developed and tested bold, new strategies to train professionals and consumers to strategically navigate that system.

The Center offers an innovative, unprecedented model to educate professionals serving health care consumers who face serious illness. The Center also offers a wealth of information to educate families as they traverse tightropes of access to health care, financial risk, medical decision-making, and employment.

Patient advocacy is more relevant than ever before. In its 2006 report on cancer survivorship care, the Institute of Medicine highlighted three health care trends that suggest this is true.

First, technological advances in screening, diagnosis and treatment make patients' health care experiences more complicated.

Second, health care delivery systems are being designed to address increasingly complex patient care needs. As a result, patients' experiences can be fragmented and frustrating.

Third, a persistent and energetic consumer movement has emerged to demand high-quality, patient-centered care. In this context, consumers face a forest of abundant and complex information, sometimes missing the trees that can help them access high-quality care. They can easily find themselves weighing options without fully understanding consequences. Meanwhile, providers face increasing demands on time, skills and resources.

Helping patients and families address illness-related psychosocial, financial and legal issues can increase satisfaction and adherence to treatment plans. Moreover, emerging evidence suggests that implementing strategies to help consumers, families and caregivers access quality care and become full partners with health care providers can reduce costs while maintaining good outcomes. Advocacy can help accomplish both objectives.