Growing evidence shows that patient and family engagement plays a central role in achieving healthcare’s “Triple Aim”: improving health outcomes while improving the patient experience of care and reducing costs.
Yet, meaningful patient and family engagement remains the exception not the rule. Many organizations have been working independently to engage patients and families, but no unified national plan has existed to help guide them.
To address this gap, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation worked with AIR to create the Roadmap for Patient and Family Engagement in Healthcare Practice and Research. Informed by the knowledge, experiences, and evidence of over 70 individuals and 60 organizations, the roadmap includes specific actions that can be taken today to partner with patients and their families to improve how care is delivered, including partnering with them in organizational design, governance, and policy making for healthcare.
The roadmap identifies eight strategies that represent both proven practices and promising pathways to meaningful patient and family engagement and the end goals of improved health and health care.
AIR Researchers Kristin L. Carman and Pam Dardess were co-authors of a post about the Roadmap for the Health Affairs Blog, a feature of the prominent health policy journal.
The National Patient Safety Foundation announced that it will highlight the Roadmap as a key resource during the 2015 Patient Safety Awareness Week, which focuses this year on ways that patient and family engagement can improve patient safety.
The Roadmap has also been featured twice in the popular #HCLDR Twitter Chat series, with AIR’s Kristin L. Carman and Pam Dardess as guests. The weekly Twitter Chat focuses discussion through the Healthcare Leadership Blog. The first chat was held on December 11, 2014 and the second on January 22, 2015.
