Patient-Centered Care
A growing number of quality improvement projects are enabling patients, families, and advocates to advise and affect decision-making within their local health care systems. A new report from Aligning Forces for Quality shares the experiences of five communities that are engaging consumers to improve ambulatory care. A recent Lessons Learned piece describes efforts made in the Humboldt County, Oregon, Minnesota, Maine, and South Central Pennsylvania alliances to incorporate consumer engagement into ambulatory quality improvement efforts. While each approach is different, each communities...
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Better Health Greater Cleveland’s efforts to spread the adoption of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model of care and electronic health records was the subject of a Plain Dealer editorial. The editorial board opined that cost-saving efforts such as medical homes could not only strongly position Cleveland for federal grants such as the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative but also lure more businesses into the area.
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Stillwater Medical Group, one of nine medical groups participating in the Minnesota AF4Q Alliance, has made an early commitment to publicly reporting patient experiences in relation to quality of care. The facility adopted the CG-CAHPS tool in order to identity areas of improvement in patient experience and to monitor results. Marked improvements were made in terms of patients’ rating of their own doctors, from 79% to 84% in just one year (Q4 2009 – Q4 2010), proving that by standard measuring – quality can improve. Stillwater's achievements are one of the three...
Health care providers and systems often overlook the patient perspective when designing and implementing strategies to improve care. Patients have an experience of the health care system that no other health care stakeholder has. By listening, health care providers can learn important lessons about how to improve care and patient health outcomes.
The sixteen Aligning Forces communities are working on projects that promote patient-centered care such as establishing partnerships between patients and providers, including patient and families in key decision-making activities, and deploying surveys to evaluate the experiences of patients in the health care system. Read More.
Read three case studies showcasing practices in the Aligning forces Greater Boston, Minnesota, Wisconsin Alliances who have planned, implemented, studied and acted on their patient experience goals. Patient-centered care means patients should feel comfortable in the care environment and leave satisfied with an understanding of their diagnosis and treatment regimen. Medical practices are facing increasing pressure to improve patient experience. Through initiatives like Aligning Forces, communities are engaging practices to use a validated survey tool called CAHPS Clinical & Group (CG-CAHPS) to measure and publicly report rates of patient experience.
Patients highly value communication and other aspects of the provider-patient relationship, and the health care landscape reflects a growing emphasis on patient-centeredness as a core element of quality. Measuring, reporting and improving patient experience of care are explicit expectations of the Aligning Forces for Quality program. This brief outlines the clinical and business benefits of measuring and addressing patient experience of care, and offers messages for conveying this information to stakeholders.