Transition towards Accessible and Person-Centered Care (2024-2028)
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Why is it a good practice of the Person-Centered Model?
Four-year government initiative (2024-2028) that seeks to transform the health system towards a more accessible, equitable and person-centered model. The proposal promotes structural and cultural changes through applied research, innovation and inter-institutional collaboration.
Person-centered approach: Favors care continuity and active participation of patients through a strategic framework developed in a participatory way. Reinforces coordination between regional and municipal levels and promotes project calls that incorporate the person-centered approach.
Integrated Assessment (Person, Family, Housing) and Life History
GPCC’s foundation is that health and care should begin with the person — their story, their life experiences, their needs and resources — not only their disease or diagnosis. In practice, this means that care should start by listening to the individual’s narrative, understanding their life context, strengths, limitations, social background, family, living situation. This holistic view replaces a purely biomedical assessment with an approach that considers the person’s biography, values, goals, and everyday life conditions.
Personalised Care and Support Plan for the Life Project
Within the person-centred care model GPCC promotes, care and treatment are co-designed in partnership with the person (and often their relatives/carers). Based on the narrative and clinical information, a personal health/care plan is created — a living document that sets out goals, strategies and follow-up tailored to the individual’s needs, resources and life circumstances. Care is understood broadly: health care, rehabilitation, long-term illness care, elderly care — and shaped around the person’s life, not around the organisation’s routines. This personalised plan approach aims at improving quality of life, autonomy, dignity and participation.
Support groups
GPCC institutionalises user and relative participation through its “Person Council for Patients and Relatives/Carers.” This council includes people with long experience of the Swedish health and care system — as patients or carers — and contributes to co-creation of research, educational materials, advocacy and implementation of person-centred care. In that sense, the Council acts as a kind of support / advisory group from the user side: bringing lived experience, validating research priorities, co-designing tools, informing policy and practice.
Case Management and Resource Coordinator
GPCC’s role is not to manage individual cases as a service provider, but to act as a research, coordination and innovation hub. It develops, tests and evaluates models of person-centred care; produces tools, guidelines, educational programmes; and supports implementation in health and care services. Through its strategic structure (steering committee, research groups, advisory councils, collaboration with clinics and institutions), GPCC coordinates resources — evidence, training, tools, standards — aiming to influence practice at institutional and systemic level. This coordination supports transformation of care systems toward more person-centred, sustainable and ethical models.
Highlined results
Although still in progress, it already constitutes an engine of change towards person-centered care, stimulating new practices of collaboration, evaluation and inclusive design in the Swedish health system, with potential for international transferability.
Inspiring ideas for other enviorments. It can works! 😉
GPCC exemplifies how health care and care services can shift from a disease-centred model to a person-centred paradigm: where people are seen as full persons with agency, history, values and needs, and not merely as patients. Its research-to-practice approach, combined with user participation and inter-disciplinary collaboration, shows that person-centred care is not just idealistic — it can be evidence-based, effective, sustainable, and scalable. Other countries or regions can adapt this model: establishing research centres or networks, involving patients and carers in co-design, promoting partnership, ensuring care is personalised, flexible and respectful of dignity. GPCC’s model proves that sustainable health and dignified care are compatible with quality, efficiency and human rights.
Other observations
Swedish Research Council (Forte)