Alberta Health Services: Family Volunteers or Advisors Gathering Real-time Patient Experiences Leading organizations in Canada invite, listen and act on feedback from patients in their care to improve the safety and quality of care. Explore the three award-winning practices linked below then join us in a conversation to learn more about each approach and reflect on how you may apply it in your organization. This webinar promises practical ideas to help you engage patients in making care safer.

1. Understanding the Impact
of Patient-and-Family-Centred Care in
Healthcare Provider Experiences
Katharina Kovacs Burns, MSc, MHSA, PhD
Clinical Quality Metrics,
&
Marian George, Family Advisor,
Alberta Health Services
CPSI Webinar Presentation
July 27, 2018
Patient and Family Volunteers or
Advisors Gathering Real-time Patient
Experiences

2. 2
General Acknowledgements
• Alberta Health Services
• Patients & their families/caregivers providing their
experiences
• Patient/Family Advisors who volunteer their time
• Unit Managers, Staff, & Clinicians at Hospital Sites
• Senior Leadership in Quality & Healthcare Improvement
• Clinical Quality Metric Staff & Colleagues
• Engagement & Patient Experience Staff
• Clinical Quality Improvement Staff

3. 3
Overview
• Identified health system Patient-and-Family-
Centred-Care (PFCC) challenges
• Approach to address identified issues/
challenges
• Our experiences – Lessons learned
• Where we go from here…..

4. 4
The Challenge for Unit Staff/Clinicians

5. 5
How Challenge Affects Patients & PFCC
Gap in understanding areas of
care needing improvement.
Delays in staff/clinicians
addressing ongoing patient
experience concerns on unit
Do not know if or how quality &
safety improvements or PFCC
initiatives make a difference
Staff not knowing
what data exists for
unit….
Staff not knowing how
to interpret data for
improvement
changes….
Unit not having
capacity to measure
patient or staff
experiences ….

6. 6
Our Identified Issue/Challenge
Expectation for health systems to improve Patient &
Family Centred Care (PFCC)
 Improvement strategies
Need to measure difference made by improvement
strategies, preferably in real-time
 But…..
Health Systems do not generally have the capacity for
gathering, analyzing and using ‘real-time’ patient
experience data.

7. 7
Our Approach to Addressing Challenge
Ideal but rare &
unrealistic:
have a dedicated staff
person at each site to visit
patients/families on units
and gather their
experiences regularly,
analyze and report to
colleagues for planning
improvement strategies
Proposed, promising
strategy:
Train and partner with
Volunteers or Patient and
Family Advisors to do
this
(This is Alberta Health
Services’ pilot in
progress)

8. 8
Patient/Family Advisors/
Volunteers engage with unit
staff to:
1. Examine existing patient data re quality/safety
concerns
2. Identify areas of care needing improvement
3. Co-design quality or safety improvement
activities/strategies
4. Collect, analyze and interpret ‘real-time’
patient/family experiences to measure results
of improvement strategies

9. 9
e.g.Identifying Areas of Patient Concerns
Examining Unit’s existing
data
Identify areas of concern or
care needing to improve
Use of Fishbone Cause &
Effect to inform what quality
or safety improvement
activity to implement

10. 10
Fishbone Cause & Effect

11. 11
Developing Improvement Plans
AIM : e.g.
Improve on providing
appropriate & adequate
information to patients
during discharge

12. 12
e.g. Determining Measures
Outcome Measures
• Improved patient
perceptions & experiences
with discharge information
provided by staff/clinicians
• Improved Unit data on
relevant patient discharge
questions
•  patient concerns/
complaints about discharge
information on Unit
• Positive staff & healthcare
provider perceptions &
experiences
Process Measures
• # of times staff/clinicians
utilize checklist with
patients at discharge
• # of patients with whom
specific unique
discharge information
was provided/discussed
by staff/healthcare
providers
Balance Measures
• # staff/clinicians’ time to
do checklist with each
patient being
discharged – workload.
• Level of staff/clinician
satisfaction with
implementing
improvement activities.
• # Patient readmissions.

13. 13
Our Experiences - Lessons Learned
Patient experience measurement - interest to patients but also
staff/clinicians & organizational leaders.
Gathering ‘real-time’ patient experience data requires innovative
approaches – acceptance of advisors/volunteers in role.
Patient/Family Advisors or Volunteers are ‘keen’ to play a role.
Co-design of initiatives does not automatically feel ‘normal’
or ‘comfortable’ for everyone involved.
Orientation, training, discussion & supports are needed
for all involved.
Noteworthy differences in the pre-post results
Understanding experiences of Advisors/ Volunteers &
unit staff/clinicians is equally as important as
understanding patient experiences

14. 14
Next Steps – Thinking of Sustainability
Connecting all the dots Developing a Framework

15. 15
Comments? Questions?
THANK YOU!
Our Contact information:
katharina.kovacsburns@albertahealthservices.ca
mj.george@shaw.ca