History
There are also Picker Institutes in the United States, Germany, and Switzerland.
Pioneering patient experience measurement
Picker Institute Europe pioneered methodologies of measuring patients' experience of healthcare in the UK.
In 1998 a core that would become Picker Institute Europe had been formed, and helped carry out, for the Department of Health in England, the first national survey of primary care patients to use this methodology.
The institute pushed for the establishment, in 2002, of an NHS national patient survey programme in England, under the then regulator, the Commission for Healthcare Improvement (CHI).
The Picker Institute was a key source of survey development and co-ordination for CHI, as later for its successor, the Healthcare Commission, now the Care Quality Commission.
The institute became an approved survey provider for the purposes of this programme and each year has produced surveys for hundreds of NHS trusts.
Origins of the methodology
The origins of patient experience measurement lie with the Picker/Commonwealth Fund Patient-Centred Care Program established in the United States in 1986.
Harvard University academics such as Tom Delbanco, Paul Cleary, and Susan Edgman-Levitan began to develop innovative ways to assess how healthcare was experienced from the patient's perspective.
Their work was backed by what is now the Boston-based Picker Institute Inc., a foundation established by the industrialist and philanthropist Harvey Picker. From 1994 they began working with partner organisations in Europe.
Picker Europe Ltd was first established as a partnership between Picker Institute Inc. and Bure, a Swedish company in 1998.
It was then relaunched in 2000 as Picker Institute Europe, a UK-based charity, with funds from Harvey Picker, who remained a Trustee until his death in March 2008.
Picker Institute Europe has been fully self-financing since 2002.
The role of Harvey Picker
The late Harvey Picker, a leading developer of healthcare technology, realised through personal experience that while the American healthcare system was technologically and scientifically outstanding, it was not adequately sensitive to patients' concerns and their comfort.
He observed first hand, with his wife Jean, who suffered from a chronic illness, that although treatment was good, hospitals often failed to recognise patients as people, and to take their concerns into consideration when treating them.
He steered the Picker Foundation, which his family firm had set up, into researching ways to measure and improve patients' experience.
For more about Harvey Picker see the obituary in the New York Times.
The Picker Institute annual awards
The Picker Institute awards for the advancement of patient-centered care are awarded by the Picker Institute Inc. in the United States. There is an individual and an institutional award and both are designed to recognize examples of best practice in patient-centred care. Further information on the awards and previous winners is available on the Picker Institute Inc. website.
