A nonprofit membership association, an affiliate of Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, incorporated in 1994. The Institute was an outgrowth of the Picker/Commonwealth Program for Patient-Centered Care, established in 1987, to investigate the discrepancies between routine investigations of patients’ satisfaction with patients’ own accounts of their health care experiences. Its aim is to promote health care quality assessment and improvement strategies in order to address patients’ needs as patients themselves define them, and to work toward models of care that make the experience of illness and health care more humane. The Institute has developed a group of tested patient survey instruments; it conducts surveys, conferences, seminars, and executive programs; produces videotapes, including the prize-winning Through the Patient’s Eyes) and publishes books, research reports, and a quarterly newsletter.