The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
Engaging Patients at the Front Lines of Primary Care Redesign: Operational Lessons for an Effective Program
Section snippets
Definitions
We define patient engagement as “an active process of ensuring that our patients’ experience, wisdom and insight are infused into individual care and the design and refinement of our care systems.”14 For the purposes of this article, the term patient engagement represents both patient and family engagement. We describe a program in which the focus of engagement was on practice redesign at the microsystem level. The microsystem is defined as a small care unit consisting of a care team, its panel
Key Organizational Components
Five components were identified as being key for fostering a culture of patient engagement: (1) alignment of the organization’s vision guiding the redesign with national patient engagement priorities, (2) readily available external experts, (3) involvement of all care team members in patient engagement, (4) integration within an existing continuous improvement team development program, and (5) an intervention deliberately matched to organizational readiness. We now describe these components.
Discussion
In this article, we describe our experience in incorporating patient engagement into an ambitious primary care redesign initiative involving 47 academic and community primary care clinics located in the state of Wisconsin. National priorities driven by emerging redesign models4., 5., 7. and public policy8 have brought the need to involve patients in primary care QI to the forefront. We also identify key organizational components critical for fostering a culture of patient engagement and
Conclusion
Current national health care policy and local market pressures are compelling partnering with patients in efforts to improve the value of the health care delivery system. Health care delivery systems across the country are responding to national requirements to demonstrate patient engagement and measure the patient experience, and many systems are engaged in efforts to redesign primary care. We found that patients provided unique and essential contributions to the redesign process. We also
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2016, HealthcareCitation Excerpt :All primary care providers and staff are expected to have knowledge of basic performance improvement skills and be able to improve processes at their clinic. As part of this training, teams were taught to engage patients and families in quality improvement efforts.22 One result of this training was the establishment of multiple patient and family advisory councils.
Editorial: Moving patients from consultants to partners in health care system redesign: Achieving meaningful engagement
2014, Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient SafetyChallenges and promising solutions to engaging patients in healthcare implementation in the United States: an environmental scan
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