Owensboro Health is seeing excellent results from the Patient Family Advisory Councils (PFACs) it launched earlier this year.
According to OH, PFACs give patients and families an active role in shaping healthcare services, and by engaging those who use the services, OH expects to better understand patients’ needs and make improvements based on the feedback.
Shannon Parham, OH’s director of patient experience, said in a hospital setting, “it is best practice and a recommendation from many of our governing bodies to involve our patients and the community in the work that we do for process improvement.”
Parham said OH previously had patients it asked about certain processes, but it sought to cast a wider net.
“We really wanted to get a broader group together that we could meet with on a regular basis, and bring things to them that we’re working on so that we always have that patient perspective and patient-centered care in mind,” said Parham, who said almost immediate results came from the Geriatric-PFAC related to changes in the discharge documents. “We have surveyed a set of patients after those changes were made, and those patients feel that the discharge summary is much easier to understand. We feel like that was a benefit.
“And then, from the nursing perspective, we got some unexpected feedback that it’s actually an easier process for the nurse to complete. It’s a huge win when we can save our nurses time.”
The Geriatric-PFAC is currently working on two projects around patient education, including improved instructions for patients who need to wear a heart monitor at home.
“We heard from our nurses that the education felt very complicated and oftentimes they were repeating the education to the patient, their families, numerous times, and they still didn’t feel confident that they understood it,” Parham said. “So we got feedback from the geriatric council on how to simplify that education and created a tip sheet that actually goes home with the patient — its just a couple of things and frequently asked questions.
“We have just now implemented that, so we don’t have any feedback. But I feel really good about that project.”
Parham is also excited about the work being done to address preventing patient falls while improving patient mobility at the hospital.
“We took a tour of a patient room with our council and talked to them about the room setup, about getting their feedback about putting reminders in the room about getting them with help and you’re not in your home environment,” she said. “Just those types of tips. We’re really excited about the work that may come from that.”
OH also formed a Pediatric-PFAC to improve communication for families with medically complex children.
“We started that council with a group of parents that had had a less than positive experience interacting with many of our diagnostic areas, like our patient lab,” Parham said. “We had interacted with those parents many times based on those experiences, and we knew we had to fix that for them.”
Parham said a lot of children that have complex medical needs receive primary care outside of OH’s service area, but still rely on OH services, such as urgent care and diagnostic purposes.
“That’s what we started to work on with that group, and that group is working on developing (a plan),” she said. “Essentially that is instruction from their specialist or primary care (provider) that’s out of town that will help guide the care here locally until we can get that child connected back to their specialist.
“Those parents have been a tremendous help taking that back to the specialist and getting their feedback and really helping us work through that process. We feel like we’re at the point where now that we need to add patients of well children that interact with our pediatric office. We’ve recently added two mothers who have well children that interact in a normal fashion with a well child, so we’re rounding out the experience of that council.”
Parham said adding the PFACs has provided a tremendous resource for OH.
“We talk about being patient-centered, and it’s really difficult to do that if you don’t have the patient perspective,” Parham said. “It’s been very eye-opening to see and hear how our processes are not necessarily patient centered from those people who experience it. So we have learned a wealth of information about how to be more patient centered.”
Parham said OH will next look to expand the program into its hospitals in Grayson and Muhlenberg counties.
“Our original thought is we would have a council that incorporated all three hospitals, because what we are finding is the work stretches across our system, so we need to implement those changes at the other two hospitals as well,” she said. “That’s an immediate goal.
“Longterm, we are finding that as our team members hear about the project and about the council, they are bringing us things they want the council feedback on. So that’s exciting when our team gets engaged.”