As the U.S. healthcare system continues to tackle the Triple Aim of improving experiences of care, better population health and lowering costs, the need for health professionals to meaningfully partner with patients is growing in importance. Yet meaningful patient and family engagement still remains the exception not the rule. Efforts to advance patient and family engagement are often siloed and lack a unified vision for how proven practices and innovative ideas can be translated into improvements in how care is delivered. With this in mind, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a private grant making organization, in collaboration with the American Institutes for Research, released the first unifying “Roadmap for Patient and Family Engagement in Healthcare Practice and Research”, in late September 2014. ¹

According to the report, meaningfully engaging with patients and families leads to:

• Improvements in patient safety and quality. When health professionals partner with patients and families, patients make more informed choices about their care, use medications more safely, practice more effective self-management, contribute to infection-control initiatives, and help reduce medical errors—all translating into measurable improvements in the quality and safety of care.
• Better patient experiences and satisfaction. Organizations that engage patients and families receive higher patient ratings of care and Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (Chttps://oneviewhealthcare.com/resources/AHPS) scores, especially for improved communication with doctors and nurses.
• Increased health professional satisfaction and retention. Patient and family engagement strategies improve health professionals’ satisfaction with their work, helping to recruit and retain high-quality talent.
• Better health outcomes. Engaged patients have better pain control and symptom resolution, better emotional health, significantly fewer preventable hospital readmissions, better management of chronic diseases, and overall improved functioning.
• Lower health care costs. Together, these benefits can substantially lower our unsustainable collective healthcare bill.

The Roadmap builds on decades of evidence, knowledge and experience from more than 70 individuals and 60 organizations representing patients, healthcare professionals, payers, purchasers and policymakers. Through eight key strategies (listed below) based on proven practices, the report provides clear, sustainable actions for how to partner with patients and families to improve patient experience and outcomes, as well as reduce costs.

8 Steps to Improved Patient Experience and Outcomes

1. Patient and Family Preparation: Educate, prepare and empower patients and family members to engage effectively in their health and health care.
2. Clinician and Leadership Preparation: Educate, prepare and empower clinicians and health care leaders to partner effectively with patients and families.
3. Care and System Redesign: Redesign system processes, policies and structures to provide opportunities for and support of partnerships between patients, families and the healthcare team.
4. Organizational Partnership: Redesign healthcare organizations to make patients and families part of the governance structure.
5. Measurement and Research: Create measures and conduct research to improve care, facilitate changes in processes and assess the relationships between outcomes, experiences and engagement.
6. Transparency and Accountability: Make data and information transparent to promote organizational accountability for quality and safety and to enable patients and families to be active in in their health and healthcare.
7. Legislation and Regulation: Encourage patient and family engagement through regulation and legislation.
8. Partnership in Public Policy: Identify and provide opportunities to integrate patient and family perspectives into public policy

The Roadmap provides a practical guide to all stakeholders who work to improve healthcare delivery – patients, healthcare professionals, organizations, leaders, insurers, vendors, and researchers. At Oneview Healthcare we are committed to advancing the Triple Aim of Healthcare. The Oneview Patient Engagement and Clinical Workflow Solution is designed to enhance the patient experience of care, while improving health outcomes and reducing costs. To find out more about our healthcare solutions click on: oneviewhealthcare.com/solutions

1. Carman KL, Dardess P, Maurer ME, Workman T, Ganachari D, Pathak-Sen E. A Roadmap for Patient and Family Engagement in Healthcare Practice and Research. (Prepared by the American Institutes for Research under a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Dominick Frosch, Project Officer and Fellow; Susan Baade, Program Officer.) Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation: Palo Alto, CA; September 2014. www.patientfamilyengagement.org