The Institute for Family-Centered Care received the 2009 Picker Organizational Award for Excellence® in the Advancement of Patient-Centered Care. The Picker Institute presented this award at the International Society for Quality in Health Care’s International Conference in Dublin, Ireland, on October 12, 2009, “In recognition of the success of the Institute for Family-Centered Care in advancing patient- and family-centered care in all settings where individuals receive care and support.”

Upon accepting the award on behalf of the Institute, Bev Johnson, President and CEO, stated:

“Thank you. It is indeed an honor to accept this lovely award from the Picker Institute on behalf of the Institute for Family-Centered Care. I still vividly remember when I first learned about the Picker Institute and its pioneering work…it was 20 years ago through an open door in a hallway at an AHA meeting, someone speaking with passion about the patient’s experience of care... The award is especially meaningful because the Picker Institute has helped the world understand the importance of the experience of care and the essential link between that experience and quality, safety, and the best outcomes.
 
In accepting this award, I would like to acknowledge and honor the extraordinary Institute staff and Board of Directors for their inspired work and commitment, but also all of the patients, families, health professionals, and organizational leaders around the world who have given us the opportunity to work with them and learn from them. With this recognition, I hope that patient- and family-centered care and the essential partnerships with patients and families will be central to the health reform debate and actions in our country, the United States, and in other countries around the world. Thank you.”

The Picker Awards for Excellence®, established in 2003, recognize individuals and organizations committed to improving the patient experience. The award honors people and organizations that have made a significant contribution to achieving this goal, and “to highlight them as role models for others in the health care field.” The Picker Institute identifies and promotes “best practices” that will lead to the advancement of patient-centered care.

The Picker Institute is an independent nonprofit organization.  READ MORE....

The University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital, the University of Minnesota Medical Center, and the University of Minnesota—our sponsors for the Institute’s upcoming Hospitals and Communities Moving Forward with Patient- and Family-Centered Care Intensive Training Seminar, October 26-29, 2009, in Minneapolis, MN—are proud of the work of their patient and family advisors. 

For nearly 20 years, the Parent Advisory Board at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital has worked with hospital administrators and health care leaders to advocate for programs at the hospital and to improve the delivery of patient- and family-centered care. Parent advisors provide unique feedback and real-life experiences to better educate health care professionals about patient and family care from their perspective.

The Parent Advisory Board meets nine times a year and can include up to 16 parents of children with inpatient or outpatient health encounters plus no more than eight hospital staff members. Currently, there are ten parent members and several staff members, including the chief nursing officer, a social worker, child life specialist, and the manager of Birth and Family Education and Perinatal Support Services. According to one parent board member, the Board functions as a team that “truly cares about the patient care experience from all perspectives, from nurses to doctors and patients to parents…”

Requests for input from patient and family advisors are on the increase as participation by parent advisors is more accepted. The hospital is actively looking for different strategies for recruiting new advisors and is working to include input from parent advisors in informal ways throughout the system.

Examples of the work of the Parent Advisory Board include providing input on the lab space in the Pediatric Specialty Clinic, the remodeling of the family lounge and pediatric imaging and sedation areas, development of a Parent Information Booklet, and collaboration with administration on the design of the new children’s hospital facility to be open in 2011. Advisors are included in tours of the construction in progress, and provide input on patient rooms, waiting rooms, décor, and other aspects of interior and exterior design. 

The Adult Advisory Council for the Medical Center is in its infancy—it started just a year ago. The structure of the Adult Advisory Council is similar to that of the Parent Advisory Council, and the Medical Center is enthusiastic about its potential to improve the delivery of patient- and family-centered care.

The University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital and the University of Minnesota Medical Center will be co-hosting a reception for patient and family advisors for the Institute’s upcoming Hospitals and Communities Moving Forward with Patient- and Family-Centered Care intensive training seminar, October 26-29, 2009, in Minneapolis, MN. This event will provide a great opportunity for patient and family leaders attending the seminar to network with each other, and learn about the work of advisors from all over the country.

Hosts for Hospitals, a non-profit organization, provides free lodging and support at volunteer-host homes to meet the housing needs of patients and their families who come to the greater Philadelphia area for specialized medical care. Hosts for Hospitals meets these needs through a network of volunteer host homes to provide a place to sleep and a feeling of home. Guests are able to return to the hospital each day refreshed and, thus, able to best offer support to their loved one.

As a part of the program, hosts are screened, the homes inspected, and each adult guest must provide personal character references prior to staying in a host's home.

Michael Aichenbaum and Nancy Wimmer—who met in Philadelphia where they both now live—joined forces in March 2000 to create Hosts for Hospitals. Their personal experiences in 1988—when they each received out-of-state life-saving treatment for cancer—provided the inspiration for this venture. Michael, then 33, traveled from his then home in Michigan to receive treatment for advanced leukemia at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital in Manhattan. During the course of his treatment, Michael, his wife, two young sons, and his mother, temporarily lived in an apartment in Manhattan for $3000 per month. By the end of his treatment, the family had spent over $20,000 on their temporary housing.

That same year, Nancy Wimmer traveled out-of-state for a bone-marrow transplant to treat Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, her family also incurring a "numbing" expense for temporary lodging.

Almost a decade later, coincidentally, Michael learned about a Boston-based Hospitality Program, a nonprofit organization which since 1983 has provided zero or low-cost lodging for patients and families through a network of volunteer-host homes, and he met Nancy. When Michael shared his idea with Nancy—of starting a volunteer-host home hospitality program to service hospitals in the greater Philadelphia area—she urged him to do so, and together, in March 2000, they established Hosts for Hospitals.

In addition to the program in Philadelphia, the Hosts for Hospitals has a National Program, which Nancy directs, to help others establish an in-home hospitality program in their home communities.

In 2008, the Minnesota Legislature passed groundbreaking health reform legislation, creating definitions, standards, and procedures for certifying "health care homes," also known as "medical homes." Principles of patient- and family-centered care are embedded throughout the legislation and requires the involvement of patients and families in clinic-based quality improvement initiatives. Patients and families have been involved in all phases of implementation to date, including the development of the certification standards and other criteria.

The Health Care Homes Section at the Minnesota Department of Health has contracted with a Primary Care Consortium (including the Minnesota Academy of Pediatrics Foundation, the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians and the Minnesota Chapter of the American College of Physicians) to provide scholarships for up to eight community teams to attend the Institute's Hospitals and Communities Moving Forward with Patient- and Family-Centered Care Intensive Training Seminar to be held in Minneapolis, October 26-29, 2009. A requirement of the scholarship is that teams must include a minimum of one patient or parent involved with the practice. A state-level Department of Health team with patient and parent members will also be attending.

As many as 80 people—averaging 5-6 people per team—may attend the Seminar because of these scholarships. According to Carolyn Allshouse at the Minnesota Department of Health, most of the teams will "come from family practice clinics, there is one internal medicine group, a couple of pediatric clinics, one nurse practitioner clinic and one health system team... The teams include a mix of urban, suburban and rural community based clinics."

Scholarship teams will be selected by a collaborative group of Department of Health staff who will evaluate the composition of the clinic or system team; type of clinic; team location(s); rationale for participation; and plan for implementation within the clinic or system.

The Department of Health hopes that sending this large group to the Seminar will:

     Promote a more common understanding of patient-and family-centered care across the state to assist with a patient- and family-centered approach to health care home implementation;

     Create patient- and family-centered champions within clinics and health systems who will be able to spread the concept with their clinics and systems, and
 
     Develop mentors who help others within their systems, clinics and communities understand patient- and family-centered care. 

Annette Bartley—a registered nurse with more than 27 years experience in health care—is currently Director of the UK Health Foundation's Safer Patient Network. Annette is a founding member of the Wales Faculty for Healthcare Improvement, where she supports the drive for quality improvement in health care across Wales.

Annette leads a unique aspect of the 1000 Lives National Patient Safety Campaign-Wales, a program initiative aimed at improving patient safety and the quality of care at the front line. The project, Transforming Care at the Bedside (TCAB), focuses specifically on improving patients' experience of care and is being 'tested' in three Welsh pilot sites. TCAB builds upon a successful U.S. initiative established in 2003 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.  

In 2006, Annette was awarded a Health Foundation Quality Improvement fellowship, which involved her spending a year at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston, Massachusetts. On her return to Wales, Annette's passion about the program's potential to transform care delivery in hospitals, nursing homes, and potentially patients' homes, led her to take the concept to the Welsh Assembly Government, which subsequently appointed her lead of the TCAB pilot program in Wales.

Read more about Annette and the National Health Service's commitment to patient- and family-centered care.