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Depression during the treatment phase was associated with significant health resource utilization, costs and mortality among men with prostate cancer. These findings emphasize the need to effectively identify and treat depression in the setting of prostate cancer.

Abstract:Background: Patient-centered care that encompasses informed decision making can improve treatment choice, quality of care and outcomes. Patient-centered care recognizes the need for major changes in the process of care that arranges health care system around the patient.Objective: Study objective was to evaluate and discuss the interplay of components of patient-centered care by developing a conceptual model of patient-centered care.Methods: Comprehensive literature review was conducted using Medline, CINAHL, and Cochrane databases. Included were English language studies addressing issues related to patient-centered-care and patient reported outcomes.Results: Though the concept of patient-centered care emerged in the early 50s, it exploded in the health care research policy arena exponentially in the late nineties. The conceptual model described here can aid objective and subjective evaluation of patient-centered care. As we strive to improve the quality of care, patient-centered care can play a pivotal role in this process. This however requires changes in our healthcare system so as to improve overall quality of care by minimizing wasteful health resource consumption. Conclusions:With healthcare costs projected to continue their rapid increase, the current paradigm of healthcare is unsustainable. More research is needed to explore the various attributes of patient-centered care, its acceptability, and comparative effectiveness in the healthcare arena.

The wide variation of cost estimates for the same diagnosis raises serious questions of comparability, accuracy, validity and usefulness of all studies. Implementing guidelines to standardise methods and study design for cost-of-illness studies would be a worthwhile first step. The advantages and disadvantages of using money or another metric such as disability-adjusted life-years as the prime outcome measure should also be publicly discussed.

It appears that although the web-based technology is gaining popularity and leads to lower cost per response, the conventional postal method of surveying continues to deliver a better response rate among the geriatric medicine division chiefs. The web-based approach holds promise given its lower costs and acceptable response rate combined with the shorter response time.