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Primary Care

Recommendations

The primary care setting provides an ideal opportunity for health care providers to work in partnership with patients and families in developing individual plans of care. These partnerships are critical to optimizing individual and family health. To support this approach to direct care, primary care settings need structures and processes in place to develop and sustain effective partnerships with patients and families to enhance quality, safety, and the experience of care.

Cover of Partnering with Patients and Families to Design a Patient- and Family-Centered Health Care System: Recommendations and Promising Practices

On June 2, 2006, a one-day invitational meeting was convened by the Institute for Family-Centered Care in collaboration with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided funding for the meeting. Leadership from The John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation also participated in meeting planning. The goal of the meeting was to explore strategies and ideas to enhance efforts to collaborate with patients and families in the redesign of health care and to realize the enormous potential of partnerships with patients and families. The meeting brought together 26 patient and family advisors, 59 administrative and clinical leaders from hospitals, primary care settings, and other health care organizations, leaders from three foundations, and 19 individuals from IHI. Meeting in small groups, attendees responded to and discussed 13 questions regarding patient- and family-centered care across the health care spectrum. A comprehensive report funded by the California HealthCare Foundation, Partnering with Patients and Families to Design a Patient- and Family-Centered Health Care System: Recommendations and Promising Practices, has been developed that summarizes the deliberations as well as the key recommendations that emerged from the discussion.

The following recommendations were proposed to make patient- and-family-centered care a reality in ambulatory and primary care settings.

Key Recommendations for Creating Partnerships in Ambulatory Settings

  1. Develop and support partnerships among administrators, providers, patients, and families to improve quality and safety in primary care.
  2. Assure that patterns of care in primary care settings are patient- and family-centered.
  3. Develop and disseminate approaches to education and training to advance partnerships with patients and families in primary care.
  4. Assure that approaches to evaluation of primary care are patient- and family-centered.
  5. Use regulatory and other incentives to promote developing and sustaining patient- and family-centered care in primary settings.
  6. Use payer requirements to promote developing and sustaining patient- and family-centered care in primary care settings.

Johnson, B., Abraham, M., Conway, J., Simmons, L., Edgman-Levitan, S. Sodomka, P., Schlucter, J., & Ford, D. (In Press). Partnering with Patients and Families to Design a Patient- and Family-Centered Health Care System: Recommendations and Promising Practices. Bethesda, MD: Institute for Family-Centered Care.