17 This report identified ten things that you should be able to expect from your healthcare: 1. Beyond patient visits: You will have the care you need when you need it, whenever you need it. You will find help in many forms, not just in face-to-face visits. You will find help on the Internet, on the telephone, from many sources, by many routes, in the form you want it. 2. Individualization: You will be known and respected as an individual. Your choices and preferences will be sought and honored. The usual system of care will meet most of your needs. When your needs are special, the care will adapt to meet you on your own terms. 3. Control: The care system will take control only if and when you freely give permission. 4. Information: You can know what you wish to know, when you wish to know it. Your medical record is yours to keep, to read, and to understand. The rule is: “Nothing about you without you.” 5. Science: You will have care based on the best available scientific knowledge. The system promises you excellence as its standard. Your care will not vary illogically from doctor to doctor or from place to place. The system will provide you all the care that can help you, and will help you avoid care that cannot help you. 6. Safety: Errors in care will not harm you. You will be safe in the care system. 7. Transparency: Your care will be confidential, but the care system will not keep secrets from you. You can know whatever you wish to know about the care that affects you and your loved ones. 8. Anticipation: Your care will anticipate your needs and will help you find the help you need. You will experience proactive help, not just reactions, to help you restore and maintain your health. 9. Value: Your care will not waste your time or money. You will benefit from constant innovations, which will increase the value of care to you. 10. Cooperation: Those who provide care will cooperate and coordinate their work fully with each other and with you. The walls between professions and institu- tions will crumble, so that your experiences will become seamless. You will never feel lost. Excerpted from Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century (Institute of Medicine Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, 2001)