Integrating Patients and Families on Quality Improvement (QI) Teams

Tom Workman, AIR

This resource offers guidance to HQIC hospitals and QI coaches on how to include patient and family advisors on hospital quality improvement (QI) teams. The resource will help hospital leaders and staff: (1) understand how patient and family members can contribute to a QI team as an advisor; (2) how to recruit patient and family advisors for a QI team; and (3) how to prepare patient and family advisors to contribute to a QI team.

STRIVE Infection Control Training

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

The CDC/STRIVE curriculum was developed by national infection prevention experts led by the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) for CDC. Courses address both the technical and foundational elements of healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevention. Courses can be taken in any order. Each course has 1 or more modules. Individual modules can be used for; new employee training, annual infection prevention training, and/or periodic training.

Antibiotic Resistance & Patient Safety Portal

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

Interactive web-based application that was created to innovatively display data collected through CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), the Antibiotic Resistance Laboratory Network (AR Lab Network), and other sources.  It offers enhanced data visualizations on Antibiotic Resistance, Use, and Stewardship datasets as well as Healthcare-Associated Infection (HAI) data.

IPRO HQIC March 2022 PFE LAN: Revitalizing PFE Practices after COVID

Prepared by IPRO HQIC

The March PFE Learning and Action Event focuses on how HQIC hospitals can revitalize their implementation of the five PFE Best Practices as the demands of the COVID surges begin to wane. The one-hour session offers a step-by-step approach for hospital leaders to assess and reset their PFE efforts after the pandemic. Representatives from Covenant Healthcare in Michigan share experiences and lessons learned.

Strategy 4: Care Transitions From Hospital to Home: IDEAL Discharge Planning

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

Discharge from hospital to home requires the successful transfer of information from clinicians to the patient and family to reduce adverse events and prevent readmissions. Engaging patients and families in the discharge planning process helps make this transition in care safe and effective. Strategy 4: Care Transitions From Hospital to Home: IDEAL Discharge Planning highlights the key elements of engaging the patient and family in discharge planning.

Guide to Patient and Family Engagement in Hospital Quality and Safety

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Research shows that when patients are engaged in their health care, it can lead to measurable improvements in safety and quality.  To promote stronger engagement, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) developed a guide to help patients, families, and health professionals work together as partners to promote improvements in care. This guide focuses on four primary strategies for promoting patient/family engagement in hospital safety and quality of care:

  • Encourage patients and family members to participate as advisors.
  • Promote better communication among patients, family members, and health care professionals from the point of admission.
  • Implement safe continuity of care by keeping the patient and family informed through nurse bedside change-of-shift reports.
  • Engage patients and families in discharge planning throughout the hospital stay.

“IPRO HQIC PFE LAN: Understanding the Lifecycle of a Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC), September, 2021”

This material was prepared by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the IPRO Hospital Quality Improvement Contractor (HQIC)

In this pre-recorded event, the AIR team hosts a discussion about the different stages of a PFAC, including how to identify them and how to move forward. The event features real-world examples of how hospitals have responded to the evolving needs of their PFACs. It includes a facilitated discussion about steps that all hospitals can take today to make the most of their PFACs and sustain engagement over time.

Conversation Guide to Improve COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake

IHI – Institute for Healthcare Improvement

This guide is intended to help health care staff and leaders have trust-building conversations about the COVID-19 vaccine, both at work and at home. Exploring people’s feelings about the vaccine through respectful, trust-building interactions over time offers the potential to increase the uptake of vaccinations. The guide helps health care staff and leaders begin to quickly engage in effective conversations about COVID-19 vaccination, enabling learning in practice and resolving issues that arise from such conversations. The focus is on having rich conversations to listen and learn about reasons and feelings for not getting vaccinated — and then seeking to have a dialogue about questions and concerns so that people can consider COVID-19 vaccination.

BOOST: Better Outcomes for Older Adults Safe Transitions

Society Hospital Medicine (SHM)

Evidence-based bundled intervention for hospitals to use to identify patients at high risk for readmission and guide the discharge plan based on identified needs assessed upon hospital admission; provides the patient a Transitional Record to guide them during the post-acute period.

Cost associated with implementation.

GRACE Team Care Model: Geriatric Resources for Assessment and Care of Elders (GRACE)

Agency Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) & Indiana University School of Medicine’s Center for Aging Research

Designed as a promising solution to the health and health care challenges faced by low-income seniors with multiple chronic conditions, researchers at Indiana University developed the GRACE Team Care model  to assist primary care physicians (PCPs) working with low-income seniors to optimize health and functional status, decrease excess usage of health care services, and prevent unnecessary long-term nursing home placement.

IHI STAAR Root Cause Analysis Tool

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

Chart Reviews of Patients Who Were Readmitted: This Root Cause Analysis (RCA) tool is one of those that we recommend for hospitals.

Conduct chart reviews of the last five readmitted patients. Reviewers should be physicians or nurses from the hospital and community settings. Reviewers should not look to assign blame, but rather to discover opportunities to improve the care of patients.

Project RED (Re-Engineered Discharge)

Project RED is supported by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHBLI), the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Hospital based care transition model that coordinates the patient’s discharge plan throughout the hospitalization and then provides a post-acute discharge guide and follow-up telephone calls.

Project Re-Engineered Discharge is a research group at Boston University Medical Center that develops and tests strategies to improve the hospital discharge process in a way that promotes patient safety and reduces re-hospitalization rates. The RED (re-engineered discharge) intervention is founded on 12 discrete, mutually reinforcing components and has been proven to reduce rehospitalizations and yields high rates of patient satisfaction.  Virtual patient advocates are currently being tested in conjunction with the RED. In addition, Project RED has started to implement the re-engineered discharge at other hospitals serving diverse patient populations. We are also looking at the transitional needs from inpatient to outpatient care of specific populations (i.e., those with depressive symptoms). Finally, we are about to start a patient-centered project to create a tool that hospitals can use to discover factors (i.e., medical legal, social, etc.) in patients’ readmissions.