Engaging Patients to Improve Healthcare Quality

M any health services organizations are seeking – and finding – ways to successfully engage patients in all areas of healthcare services, from planning to delivery to evaluation. Including patients in discussions and decisions about their own healthcare may seem like a good and obvious thing to do. However, assessing the success of this approach is complicated as there is little empirical evidence to show whether engaging patients affects the use of services, quality of care or patient satisfaction (Crawford et al. is helping to fill the research gap through its Patient Engagement Projects (PEP), a $2 million-plus initiative financed in partnership with the Health Council of Canada and the Max Bell Foundation. The goal of the PEP initiative is to find, encourage, develop and share innovative strategies that lead to true patient-centred care. Following an environmental scan and expert consultations , CHSRF's call for proposals for patient engagement intervention projects in April 2010 attracted 74 applications from across Canada, from which 10 projects were selected for funding. How PEP Works To be eligible, projects must have a clearly defined quality improvement component. Formal evaluations of the intervention's processes, outputs and outcomes are required, and the project must document its implications for patient-centred services. PEP teams are brought together at least four times over the two-year project period for workshops, where they learn from invited experts and discuss their projects with peers. As well, teams have real-time access to an electronic repository and networking hub that stores documentation, shares information on the progress of projects and provides a forum for discussions. CHSRF provides teams with ongoing mentoring on patient engagement, quality improvement methods and performance measurement and evaluation. Although the projects had been under way for just six months when this article was written, all 10 teams were already reporting significant accomplishments – not just in terms of implementing strategies but also in seeing some tangible benefits for patients. Two projects are profiled here. The objectives of McGill University Health Centre's project are aligned with the two principal objectives of the organization's Transforming Care at the Bedside initiative: (1) to understand the in-patient experience through the eyes of patients and families and (2) to deeply engage patients and families, along with staff, in reshaping care processes in order to respond to their real needs. The project team used a number of targeted strategies, including providing hospitalized patients with opportunities to …