Sustainability PAC Meeting Curriculum

[CHC LOGO] PATIENT ADVISORY COUNCIL SUSTAINABILITY MEETING Location Date Time

OBJECTIVES . To facilitate a conversation about the sustainability of Patient Advisory Council meetings at the community health center and to identify opportunities for spread to other sites. . To identify community health center staff who will lead the Patient Advisory Council meetings henceforth. . To identify opportunities for sustained integration into the community health center’s quality improvement plan. . To discuss continuous leadership engagement and commitment. . To confirm patient recruitment and outreach techniques. . To sanction logistical needs required for each Patient Advisory Council meetings, including incentives.

PRE-MEETING CONSIDERATIONS . What information do you need to have prepared? For example, why did the health center decide to start these groups? . How will information from this meeting be shared with other community health center staff? . How will you assure strong follow up to this meeting?

AGENDA The instructions assume a one-hour meeting. Please edit the wording and design as you see fit.

INTRODUCTIONS AND WELCOME

CONSIDERATIONS Incentives ¨ What incentives are most appropriate for your health center? ¨ Who will organize these incentives? ¨ Who will keep track of the incentives as they are disseminated to patients?

Staffing FTE ¨ Who will lead patient recruitment efforts? ¨ Who will be responsible for reminders to patients about upcoming meetings? ¨ Who will lead subject matter collection efforts? This includes tracking and agenda development. ¨ Who will be responsible for sharing information garnered from these meetings to the greater community health center staff? ¨ Who will lead the staff portion of the social determinants of health curriculum? How frequently will this be conducted? ¨ Who will be the lead for maintaining the patient confidentiality agreements? ¨ Who will be responsible for ensuring these are completed at each meeting?

Quality Improvement Plan ¨ How will these groups be incorporated into the community health center’s quality improvement plan? ¨ How is information shared with CHC staff? ¨ How staff can address social determinants of health barriers? ¨ Is there an on-boarding process for introducing patient advisory councils to new community health center staff? ¨ How are emerging themes and integrated into the CHC’s quality improvement plan?

Workflow ¨ How will the meetings continue be integrated into CHC workflow? ¨ How confident are you that these groups can be successfully and sustainably incorporated into your workflow as it currently exists? [CHC LOGO] Leadership Engagement and Commitment ¨ How will you continue to gauge and ensure leadership engagement and commitment? ¨ Do you feel confident about continued support at the executive level? ¨ How do you share information learned from these meetings with leadership?

Formalized Policy Maintaining written policies for how these patient advisory councils will be incorporated into the community health center’s workflow is vital for sustainability. These policies should contain information pertaining to staff FTE, incentives, recruitment logistics, and information dissemination. It is important to identify lead(s) for each of the areas below. One person should be responsible for keeping track of this information in a place that is accessible to team members. ¨ Who will create these policies? ¨ Who will maintain them? ¨ Where will they be stored?

Suggested areas to include are listed here:  Recruitment  Topic gathering  Patient Information  Facilitation  Social Determinants of Health

POTENTIAL TOPICS ¨ Who will lead subject matter collection efforts? This includes tracking and agenda development. ¨ Who will be responsible for sharing information garnered from these meetings to the greater community health center staff? ¨ Who will be the lead for maintaining the patient confidentiality agreements? ¨ Who will be responsible for ensuring these are completed at each meeting?

Some ideas are listed below:  What does your clinic do for you?  Clinic updates  Workflow changes  Staffing changes  ACA, Colorado Benefit Exchange, Medicaid, Medicare  New board member recruitment  New policies

OUTREACH AND PATIENT RECRUITMENT

Staff Responsibilities: Assign specific staff members to each component of the outreach and patient recruitment plan. It is vital to ensure that patient advisory council team members have clearly defined roles and accountability for patient outreach.

Alert Staff: Send email to all CHC staff alerting them to identify patients who would be strong contributors to the PAC. It will be important to include a description of what patients you are looking for and where they should send information about potential participants:  “We are seeking patients to participate in the Patient Advisory Council (PAC) that are involved, pro- active, and invested in helping identify solutions for challenges at the CHC. Please try to identify patients with a ‘can-do’ positive attitude and who would be interested in problem solving and giving feedback on CHC policies and procedures.”  “Please contact [NAME], with any potential new patient recruits for the PAC.

Flyers: Post-PAC informational flyers (in both English and Spanish) in the waiting room and exam rooms.

Outreach: Continuously reach out to patients submitted by staff, or self-submitted because of the waiting room flyers. When you call them to ask if they would like to participate remember to concentrate on the “honor” of being chosen. [CHC LOGO]  “Your provider has nominated you to participate in [CHC Name’s] patient advisory council. We would be honored to have you attend”

Patient List: Keep a list of patients that have positively responded to being part of the PAC.

Planning: Reach out to patients via telephone one week in advance of the meeting and then again the day prior to the meeting.

Continuous Updates: Remember to take every opportunity possible to update the CHC staff about the PACs and to ask them what subjects they would like addressed, for example, at staff or all-provider meetings.

SPREAD Will you spread these groups to other clinic sites?