Project Summary
Developing patient-centered approaches to primary care is a key priority for clinics nationwide. However, patient perspectives on effective use of patient-centered care interventions are not often sought in clinical settings. Our project brings together patients and providers from the K-6 Adult Medicine Clinic (AMC) within the safety-net Highland Hospital of the Alameda Health System to develop our clinic's capacity to engage patients and clinicians in collaborative research around effective use and delivery of primary care.
The AMC serves more than 115 patients a day from an ethnically and racially diverse, low-income, multicultural patient community that speaks more than 25 different languages. Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems. Survey patient satisfaction scores indicate patient dissatisfaction, but scores alone cannot paint a full picture of patient experience. The AMC is evolving into a patient-centered medical home (PCMH), a process that necessitates patient feedback to ensure success.
The AMC is also a residency clinic (50% of patients are seen by residents); this creates unique challenges in ensuring that patients have a consistent, quality clinical experience. The Patient-Centered Primary Care (PCPC) Team_composed of two physicians, a researcher, and an AMC patient_seeks to engage our English-, Spanish-, and Mien-speaking patient population and our clinical staff in forming a PCPC Council to gather patient feedback and ultimately support comparative effectiveness research around addressing clinical challenges. By facilitating patient and provider collaboration, we can strengthen AMC's primary care services and provide a model for other safety-net settings to draw upon in their own work. Establishing the PCPC Council is our first step.