Family-Centered Care

Family-Centered Care : "After years of confining outreach efforts to the occasional focus group on decor or food service, hospitals are striking far-reaching new partnerships with patients and their families, creating advisory councils whose members help plan new facilities, set hiring standards and interview job candidates. Patient groups are participating in the design of clinical trials, evaluating hospital equipment, reviewing medication safety measures and helping train medical residents. The new councils are giving patients an increasingly powerful voice at a time when hospitals are scrambling to increase customer satisfaction, better respond to complaints and avoid costly malpractice litigation. Hospitals also have a strong financial incentive to bring patients and families into the equation: Starting later this year, Medicare will require hospitals to publish customer-satisfaction data on the Medicare Web site to receive full reimbursement for their services. Patient advisers from hospitals around the country worked with survey firm Press Ganey Inc., on five questions to measure concern for patient and family issues. The nonprofit Institute for Family-Centered Care, which developed the core principles behind the patient- and family-centered care movement, is working with hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. and Europe to create patient and family advisory councils. Last"