Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (ICSI), a Minnesota nonprofit organization comprised of 61 medical practices, strives to embed the patient’s voice and perspective across the continuum of quality improvement in Minnesota. A patient engagement program focuses on palliative care to help patients with life-limiting diseases receive the care they want. ICSI identified a gap in communication between providers and consumers about palliative care and has developed a framework to encourage these vital, but often uncomfortable, conversations among providers, patients, and...
By participating in the national AF4Q program to reduce 30-day readmission rates for heart failure (HF), Carson City Hospital in Michigan was able to use the lessons it learned to focus the staff on performance on other core measures.
Thanks to health care reform, the idea of patient centered medical homes (PCMHs) is a topic du jour in policy circles. But 22 physician practices are making the concept a reality as part of the South Central Pennsylvania Alliance’s (SCPA) Patient-Centered Medical Home Collaborative. SCPA is a community in Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q), the Robert Wood Johnson’s signature effort to lift the overall quality of health care in targeted communities, reduce racial and ethnic disparities, and provide models for national reform.
Now in its third year, the collaborative has...
The demands on physicians, nurses, and staff in medical surgical units can be intense. Juggling complex patient needs, making the rounds, following documentation requirements, and managing staff turnover in a fast paced environment can leave little time for meaningful patient interaction or evaluating and improving patient satisfaction.
St. Mary’s Medical Center, a 233-bed acute care facility in Lewiston, ME, “patient-centered” is more than just a buzz word—it’s a standard of practice that’s carried out by every staff member on every shift. St. Mary’s approach to patient-centered care is clearly evident in its adoption of Transforming Care at the Bedside (TCAB), a process improvement methodology the hospital is using for discharge planning. Developed and led by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, TCAB seeks to engage patients further...
Continuing its focus on consumer engagement, the Puget Sound Health Alliance (PSHA), through its Your Voice Matters initiative, has invited e-Patient Dave (Dave deBronkart) to put a face and story to its patient empowerment mission. E-Patient Dave is a cancer survivor whose catchphrase, “patient is not a third-person word,” embodies the Your Voice Matters initiative.
Your Voice Matters is PSHA’s groundbreaking effort to understand how patients experience their primary health care providers and give them tools to take ownership of their health. Its newest...
AF4Q communities are at the forefront; re-thinking the way in which health care is organized, delivered, and paid for. For example, one prominent model for re-thinking the delivery of primary care is patient-centered medical homes, and several Aligning Forces communities are on the frontlines.
In the Maine AF4Q Alliance, 22 adult and four pediatric practices covering 130,000 patients and 15 percent of the state's physicians are part of a PCMH pilot. Maine's Medicaid program an most major insurers have aligned forces to pay pilot practices differently and use patient...
When staff surveys and feedback revealed a concern among nurses about patient assignments and the provision of safe patient care, the TCAB team at York Hospital set out to determine the number of patients one nurse can care for. This is a difficult task, as individual patients have varying care requirements. With staff input, the team developed and tested a patient acuity tool designed to predict how much nursing time each patient requires and based staffing assignments on the estimates. The tool incorporates specific care tasks, such as feeding patients, as well as factors affecting...
To decrease its 30-day readmission rates, Samaritan Albany General Hospital created a comprehensive patient education and post-hospital follow-up system for its heart failure patients. This multi-disciplinary approach to heart failure care and follow-up consisted of several strategies, including working toward standardizing congestive heart failure education materials within the entire health system, implementing the teach-back method, distributing “Heart Failure Care Kits” upon admission, and conducting follow-up phone calls after discharge. As a result, Samaritan Albany...
When the Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA) applied to join the Partnership for Patients (P4P) Hospital Engagement Network, it realized it would need to change the culture both at the leadership and front line staff levels to bring about the network’s required results.
Hospital Engagement Networks (HEN) work to develop learning collaboratives for hospitals and provide a wide array of initiatives and activities to improve...