The Institute provides essential leadership for advancing the practice of patient- and family-centered care. By promoting collaborative, empowering partnerships among patients, families, and health care professionals, the Institute facilitates patient- and family-centered change in all health care settings. The Institute also serves as a central resource for policy makers, administrators, program planners, clinicians and staff, educators of health professionals, design professionals, and patient and family advisors and leaders.
Here are some current or on-going initiatives in which the Institute is engaged:
With the support of the Rothschild Foundation, the Institute is developing—for executives and senior managers of hospitals and long-term care settings—multimedia resource materials on partnering with patients/residents of long-term care facilities and families to improve care, programming, and health care design. These resources are intended to be transformative, capturing the interest and sparking the creativity and commitment of leaders to encourage and support partnerships with patients/residents of long-term care facilities and families across the continuum of care. In addition, several Institute publications are being updated as a part of this project.
The Institute is participating on a team, led by the American Institutes for Research, for an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) funded multi-year initiative to develop, evaluate, and implement a guide to promote patient and family engagement in hospital settings. Other organizations in this collaborative endeavor include, Consumers Advancing Patient Safety, The Joint Commission, Planetree, the Health Research and Education Trust, the Carilion Clinic, Aurora Health Care, and the Maryland Patient Safety Center.
The Institute's President and CEO, Bev Johnson, participates on the Consensus Committee to Establish the Recommended Standards for Newborn ICU Design and is on the planning committee for the Annual Gravens Conference on the Physical and Developmental Environment of the High Risk Infant.
Bev Johnson and Cezanne Garcia serve as faculty for Team Up for Health, a California HealthCare Foundation initiative to develop partnerships with patients and families to advance the practice of self-management support (SMS) in six clinics throughout California, particularly those in underserved communities. Patients, families, staff, and physicians collaborate to improve educational resources to support active patient and family involvement in SMS, expand the use of information technology and social marketing, create linkages with community resources, and re-design clinic processes and workflow.
The Institute's Marie Abraham, Senior Policy & Program Specialist, serves as a faculty member to the NIC/Q 2009 Quality Improvement Collaborative of the Vermont Oxford Network (VON), which runs through December 2010. VON is an international organization committed to improving quality and safety in medical care for newborn infants and their families through education, research, and quality improvement. There are multidisciplinary teams-which include parents-from 53 hospitals and several state-wide organizations working with faculty to fulfill the Collaborative's vision: "To be an inclusive Community of Practice that supports the pursuit of shared goals for improvement and the provision of exemplary care for all newborn infants and their families." Family involvement in quality improvement is an integral part of VON initiatives: VON has a family member on its Advisory Board, a family member serves on the core faculty team, and families are active participants on the majority of improvement teams.
Bev Johnson, Institute President & CEO, serves on the Selection Committee for the American Hospital Association-McKesson Quest for Quality Prize and the American Hospital Association's National Advisory Committee.
Learn more about the Institute's Past Initiatives.