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Patient and family engagement: a survey of US hospital practices
  1. Jeph Herrin1,2,
  2. Kathleen G Harris1,
  3. Kevin Kenward1,
  4. Stephen Hines1,
  5. Maulik S Joshi1,
  6. Dominick L Frosch3,4
  1. 1Health Research & Educational Trust, American Hospital Association, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  2. 2Division of Cardiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
  3. 3Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Palo Alto, USA
  4. 4Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Kathleen Harris, Health Research & Educational Trust, American Hospital Association, 155 N Wacker Drive Suite 400, Chicago, IL 60606, USA; kharris{at}aha.org

Abstract

Background Patient and family engagement (PFE) in healthcare is an important element of the transforming healthcare system; however, the prevalence of various PFE practices in the USA is not known.

Objective We report on a survey of hospitals in the USA regarding their PFE practices during 2013–2014.

Results The response rate was 42%, with 1457 acute care hospitals completing the survey. We constructed 25 items to summarise the responses regarding key practices, which fell into three broad categories: (1) organisational practices, (2) bedside practices and (3) access to information and shared decision-making. We found a wide range of scores across hospitals. Selected findings include: 86% of hospitals had a policy for unrestricted visitor access in at least some units; 68% encouraged patients/families to participate in shift-change reports; 67% had formal policies for disclosing and apologising for errors; and 38% had a patient and family advisory council. The most commonly reported barrier to increased PFE was ‘competing organisational priorities’.

Summary Our findings indicate that there is a large variation in hospital implementation of PFE practices, with competing organisational priorities being the most commonly identified barrier to adoption.

  • Healthcare quality improvement
  • Patient-centred care
  • Leadership

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2015-004006

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