The Goal Directed Health Care team includes physicians, researchers, residents, and students who are united behind a common theme: improving healthcare through a change in perspective. Often, physicians and patients approach healthcare from a problem-solving perspective (i.e., the "goal" is to fix or remove problems). This works well when helping people who have acute, solvable problems (e.g. infections and injuries) but not so well when the person's health challenges are chronic (e.g., diabetes and heart failure) or not very treatable (e.g. dementia).  It is also not too helpful when dealing with strategies or events that are not really problems (e.g., preventive services, pregnancy and childbirth, and death and dying). More and more, the problem-oriented model fails to address the issues that healthcare faces most often, and because of the mismatch it may actually be contributing to adverse events and the rising cost of care.

 

Goal-directed healthcare (GDHC) is a model that strives to do what the problem-based model cannot. Instead of identifying and treating problems and hoping that will extend and improve life, this model focuses on shared goal-setting between provider and patient, allowing for more patient-centered communication and better health outcomes. Healthcare needs to change, and we are helping to facilitate that change.