AHA Stat: Ambulatory care next frontier in patient and family engagement

The AHA’s Health Research & Educational Trust affiliate was recently awarded a contract from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to work with experts in ambulatory care, patient and family engagement and care transitions to create a toolkit specific to the ambulatory care setting, HRET President and CEO Jay Bhatt, D.O., notes in an AHA Stat blog post today. The project builds on HRET’s work in ambulatory care and increased focus on promoting Patient and Family Engagement to prevent patient safety issues. “With evidence demonstrating a strong connection between PFE and safer care, and with many resources focused on engaging patients and their families to improve care, now is the time to reduce errors and improve quality in the outpatient setting,” Bhatt says. “If health care leaders across the continuum are truly committed to enhancing safety, then PFE must become hardwired into their practices. The next health care frontier will have the patient firmly rooted at the center of the care team, improving both experience of care, as well as connecting patient insights to reduce diagnostic errors.”