The new Patient Care Program will take a two-prong approach: 1) creating ways to engage and support patients and families in their own healthcare, partnering with clinicians to substantially improve the quality, safety, cost, and dignity of healthcare and 2) defining and demonstrating that implementing a relational approach-–which connects patients, care teams, process, and technology–-will create a more supportive healthcare delivery system that reliably and consistently provides safe, high quality care and meaningfully engages patients and their families. The Program’s first initiative is anticipated to launch in early 2015. By the end of 2012 we anticipate announcing several grants and research projects in support of the new Program. These grants will most likely consist of investigative grants, research projects, and pilots that will help refine the scope of a new initiative as well as the overall Patient Care Program. As we build the Program, we will continue our work with the Betty Irene Moore Nursing Initiative and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at the University of California, Davis.
Some of the specific questions that we hope our early investments will help address include:
- How should patient and family engagement be defined?
- How should “families” be defined?
- How will we know if patients and families are engaged?
- In what situations is patient and family engagement most impactful?
- What interventions can be successfully used to engage patients and families? And what are the barriers to successful engagement?
- How can healthcare professionals be supported to put these interventions into practice?
- What outcomes are important to patients, and how can we build these into our understanding of the value of healthcare services?
- What are the best innovations in the areas of interventions, technology, measurement, and patient demand that could have a greater role in improving healthcare?
- What are the elements of a systems approach that could improve care?
- How can we implement a systems approach to achieve the promise of high reliability performance of complex practices?