Look to the past to improve our future: Improving quality, safety and equity through community and patient engagement

Healthcare administrators must ensure delivery of care that is high quality, safe and produces equitable outcomes while balancing business, workforce and community needs. To meet these challenges while guiding their organisations through COVID-19 recovery, administrators can look to a strategy with a strong track record for success: engaging patients, families and communities. This paper focuses on evidence, experience and best practices for improving quality, safety and equity by engaging people, patients, families and communities. Effective patient and family engagement (PFE) and community engagement strategies draw on research and experience across a wide variety of efforts, from nationwide federal programmes such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Partnership for Patients initiative to health system- and neighbourhood-level programmes. Research demonstrates that commitment to PFE leads to measurable improvements in quality and safety. Experience shows that engagement, when practiced with attention to diversity, equity and inclusion, can reduce health disparities. Engagement best practices include: making engagement a strategic priority, embedding patients and families with diverse perspectives into improvement efforts, supporting continuous learning by adapting engagement efforts over time, benchmarking progress and measuring disparities. To continue the advances begun before the pandemic, healthcare administrators and leaders must redouble engagement efforts and implement best practices. Administrators can meet the many challenges of the moment by returning to the proven strategy of engaging patients, families and communities to drive integrated quality, safety and equity efforts.