Health Innovation Forum and the MUHC-ISAI are pleased to bring you Patients as Partners, the report from our patient engagement activities over the past year. It offers an introduction to best practices and reveals the phenomenal energy for improvement that comes from working alongside patients to co-create health care. The image you see on the cover of the report, developed by the Office of Collaboration and Patient Partnership at the Université de Montreal's Faculty of Medicine, stood out as a compelling message to guide the actions of all people involved in delivering, receiving and designing health care.

Here's an update on patient engagement activities undertaken by our collaborators since the conference last October:

At the McGill University Health Centre, a patient-partnership program coordinator hired in January 2015 is working with the central Users' Committee to create patient and family advisory forums in each clinical program. This initiative seeks to formalize the integration of the patient and family voice into decision-making at all levels of the organization.

The Office of Collaboration and Patient Partnership (OCPP) at the Université de Montréal is currently developing a website to make its approach available to the public at large and describe its activities in education, care and research. OCPP involvement in research is expanding quickly through initiatives to restructure research and facilitate the integration of patient partners into research design and projects. The OCPP has also taken on the responsibility of training and preparing patients to play a productive role in research, care and education settings.

The Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement's (CFHI) Partnering with Patients and Families for Quality Improvement Collaborative, launched in July 2014, includes 22 improvement teams working on projects in four major areas: transitions in care; experience-based co-design; chronic disease management; and support for patient/family advisors and councils. Teams have opportunities to learn from each other and are supported by 17 coaches, along with CFHI staff. Over the past year, they have participated in webinars on the evidence base for partnering with patients and families in quality improvement and on different dimensions of measurement. A survey, completed in February 2015 and to be repeated next October, will describe changes achieved and team members' experience of working together on quality improvement.

Significant revisions have been made to Accreditation Canada's Qmentum program to strengthen client- and family-centred care content. This change reflects the need for meaningful involvement of clients and families throughout the care process, and covers all aspects of the planning, delivery, and evaluation of services. In 2016, Accreditation Canada will provide additional support to health care and social services organizations and to surveyors with the implementation and evaluation of this new content. Support will include: education about the changes and the impact on organizations; redeveloped surveyor tools that include activities specific to measuring meaningful engagement; and strengthening the processes used by Accreditation Canada for engaging clients and families in its development work

As part of its effort to become truly patient centric, Roche is working with patients, their families and healthcare teams to better understand the journey from the moment a patient enters the healthcare system for a diagnosis, through treatment, to after-treatment care. Enabling patients to define their needs is recognized at Roche as key to empowering them to participate fully in healthcare decisions. On a number of occasions, Roche has invited patients to present their stories – of success and challenge – to employees, and the company is examining ways to learn directly from patients, build upon the successes they highlight and address the needs they identify.

Patients Canada has become increasingly engaged in the Ontario Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research grant and is responding to requests for help on a number of projects. 

IMS Health is currently working with Quebec- and Ontario-based hospitals on pilot projects designed to enhance patient care and engagement. The company's innovative tools simplify access to internal clinical data and enable services and solutions aimed at improving clinical processes, increasing quality and patient satisfaction and conducting research. The Nexxus Patient solution is a sophisticated patient engagement and communications engine that adapts to the processes and pathways of clinical departments, and extends the reach of clinical teams  to patients and patients’ families. mHealth/AppNucleus is the industry’s most secure mobile health system designed to capture patient self assessments, enable naturalistic follow-up and perform analytics and produce scorecards to support quality improvement. To find out more contact Sylvia Durgerian.

The INSPIRED program presented by Dr. Graeme Rocker in the Patients as Partners report is being expanded this year to 19 centres across Canada. The initiative, supported by the CFHI and Boehringer-Ingelheim, aims to test the transferability and scalability of this approach to patient care in COPD.
Another project, designed to provide patient-centred coordinated care for people living with atrial fibrillation (AF), has also been significantly expanded since the case study we published in 2013. Project lead Dr. Thao Huynh at the MUHC reports that as of March 1, 2015, more than 3,400 patients were enrolled in the program and 2,500 patients had received a full year of coordinated interdisciplinary care for atrial fibrillation (AF). The project is supported by Boehringer-Ingelheim. Preliminary results on 1,061 patients show that the FA-CILITER program improved adherence to national AF guidelines, with 87% of AF patients being appropriately anticoagulated and persisting with treatment, and a 30% reduction in emergency room (ER) visits and cardiovascular hospitalizations in one year. Find out more 

Shortly after the October conference of the MUHC-ISAI, Dan Florizone was named President and CEO of the Saskatoon Health Region. He started work there in January 2015, and aims to continue to focus on patient-centred care.

Jim Merlino left the Cleveland Clinic to take on the position of President and Chief Medical Officer in Press Ganey's Strategic Consulting Division. Dr. Merlino considers this an opportunity to impact patient care and healthcare improvement across a much broader platform. Press Ganey is a leading provider of patient experience measurement, performance analytics and strategic advisory solutions for health care organizations across the continuum of care. It serves more than 22,000 health care facilities, including 62% of U.S. acute care hospitals and 73% of U.S. medical practices with more than 50 physicians.