Supplemental Material: Twenty Years On – Has Patient-centered Care Been Equally Well Integrated Among Medical Specialties?

We explore the extent to which differing medical specialties have engaged with the concept over the last 20 years and how and why this attention has varied among a sample of medical specialties since 2001. Reference to patient-centered care in the medical literature for selected specialties was used as a proxy for clinical application of patient-centered care in those disciplines.

We undertook a statistical analysis and historical review of the medical literature that references the concept of patient-centered care in pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYN), orthopedics, radiology, dermatology, and neurosurgery. We analyzed the extent to which the literature referencing patient-centered care has changed for the six disciplines since first mentioned in the Institute of Medicine 2001 publication.