Healthcare organizations nationwide are using patient-family advisory councils (PFACs) as a foundational structure to engage patients and family members as partners in quality and process improvement and to align the organization’s strategic priorities with what matters most to patients. Despite this increasing engagement with PFACs, little is known about how these groups receive or make use of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) to inform their understanding, decision making, and recommendations to the healthcare organizations they advise. The purpose of this project is to build our knowledge of how PFACs receive and make use of PCOR and to co-develop a tool that will support their awareness and use of PCOR in the future.

The projected output from this project is the development and dissemination of an education manual for PFACs, co-developed with PFACs, about how to engage in and with patient-centered outcomes research. The manual will be free, publically available, and launched during Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month in October 2017.   

Project collaborators include twenty Patient-Family Advisory Councils (PFACs) from the following organizations: The Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore, Maryland); Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tennessee); Maury Regional Medical Center (Columbia, Tennessee); Fauquier Health Hospital (Warrenton, Virginia); Carolinas Medical Center-Mercy (Charlotte, North Carolina); Bellevue Hospital Center (New York, New York); Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Northport, New York); New York Presbyterian-Westchester Division (White Plains, New York); Northern Westchester Hospital (Mount Kisco, New York); Brattleboro Retreat (Brattleboro, Vermont); Longmont United Hospital (Longmont, Colorado); Enloe Medical Center (Chico, California); University of Washington Medical Center (Seattle, Washington); Griffin Hospital (Derby, Connecticut); Stamford Hospital (Stamford, Connecticut); Planetree (virtual, worldwide); Boston Children’s Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts); Brigham & Women’s Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts); Amita St. Alexius Medical Center (Hoffman Estates, Illinois); Laser Spine Institute (Tampa, Florida). Dissemination partners include the National Quality Forum (NQF) and Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). Other project Collaborators include Healthcare for All  and The Institute for Patient and Family-Centered Care.