Project Summary
Developing patient-centered approaches to primary care is a key priority for clinics nationwide. 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. Surveys of patient satisfaction alone cannot paint a full picture of patient experience. The AMC’s transition to a patient-centered medical home and its status as a residency clinic (50 percent of patients are seen by residents) create unique challenges in ensuring that patients have a consistent, high-quality clinical experience.
The Patient-Centered Primary Care Council (PCPCC) was created in July 2014 and consists of three small groups—English-, Spanish-, and Mien-speaking individuals—made up of AMC patients and clinic staff. The PCPCC meets regularly to discuss key clinic challenges and brainstorm small-win solutions to strengthen the patient experience of primary care in the AMC. During Tier III, the PCPCC will focus on finalizing a comparative effectiveness research (CER) question focused on the patient experience of primary care. The council will collaborate with research partners and external stakeholders to ensure that its CER endeavors contribute to the field as well as to diverse patients’ primary care experiences. Ultimately, the PCPCC will submit proposals to funding opportunities to support the council’s patient-centered primary care research goals.