Our community has broad experience with patient engagement. Many of our Core Partner organizations have patient and family advisory or resident councils who regularly give feedback to influence change.
Informally, we continue to see the increasing regularity of patients engaging in QI work across the system. Our community has developed a broad toolkit with a range of engagement and design tools from design thinking (i.e. empathy maps, journey maps) to Lean systems and tools (root cause analyses, A3s) to patient interviews and focus groups to Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles. We have used a combination of these tools to engage clients in numerous events to co-design our vision for the future of the G&A OHT, which has been articulated in this application.
We see patients, families and caregivers continuing to play a role in all of the stages of improvement and operations from identifying problems to having patients involved in working groups testing changes, and setting and reviewing metrics that are meaningful to patients. For example: “# of patients safe at home” vs. “Reducing ED visits” or “Improved experience of care for LGBTQ patients” vs: “# of physicians use the charting tool for LGBTQ care”.
We would like to highlight a small number of examples that showcase our commitment to engaging clients as partners in health system design and decision making:
- Guelph CHC engaged Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health to gather feedback from Consumption and Treatment Service clients on the services they were receiving. All of the feedback has either been implemented or is in the process of being implemented by the Guelph CHC.
- Designing Better project (http://designingbetter.ca/). This project conducted deep and meaningful engagement with a small number of complex, vulnerable clients in the Guelph community, which was used to redesign adult intensive MH&A services in the Guelph community.
- System partners have also engaged clients in co-designing services for our cQIP initiatives to implement new care pathways and improve care transitions for people with COPD and HF. A patient representative was part of the steering committee for the work related to the design of a cardiac rehab care pathway and program for Guelph and area.
- The Guelph FHT Patient and Family Advisory Committee (PFAC) has 10 patient members and 2 staff liaisons. The committee members regularly get updated on programs and services in the organization and make specific recommendations to the program areas to make changes and be accountable to. The Guelph FHT PFAC has integrated patient advisors into various operational working groups. Guelph FHT also elicits feedback from patients through an online survey platform. Feedback is used to improve clinic operations, address access challenges (awareness, after hours etc.), and provide feedback to other relevant services as opportunities for improvement arise.
- GGH incorporates patient feedback into their quality improvement huddle boards that are reviewed by members of the team weekly to guide improvement work at the departmental level.
The skills and expertise that exists in our partner organizations will be leveraged to support a focus on patient engagement at the OHT level.