Northwest Hospital Alliance Conference on Navigating Patients Through Care Transitions and Improving Continuity of Care a Huge Success
Bringing together some of the best thinkers in health care transitions and patient centered care, the conference speakers and topics provided opportunity for attendees to explore how to connect and improve continuity across the continuum of care. “This continuity of care benefits our patients and helps us to improve the use of health care resources,” said one attendee.
Keynote speaker, Eric A. Coleman, MD, MPH, spent the first day of the conference with us teaching the multidisciplinary group of attendees how to use his nationally known “Coleman Model” of patient centered care transitions. The model is known as one of the best evidence based care transitions guidelines. Coleman’s credentials include: Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of Health Care Policy and Research at the University of Colorado. He is the Director of the Care Transitions Program, and also serves as the Executive Director of the Practice Change Leaders.
Nationally acclaimed speaker, Allison Massari, was our keynote speaker on day two of the conference. Through her talk, “Transforming Patient Lives: The Art of Person Centered Care,” she shared her inspiring story of being burned alive in a car accident, and how the tender care of her nurses and care givers meant so much through her treatment and recovery.
Piri Ackerman Barger, from UC Davis spoke on Exploring Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Nursing and Nursing Education. In this talk Piri discussed aspects of culture and how it relates to perceptions and impacts care.
One participant exclaimed, “The entire content of this conference rivaled those I have traveled many miles to attend. All of the speakers brought unique and valuable information that can be integrated into daily work, improve patient experience and outcomes.”
Another said, “The level of speakers for this conference is impressive. Thank you for bringing this to our community. I appreciated all topics and learned that North Idaho is on the right path to better continuity of care for our patients in our communities. ”
Conference participants learned strategies and were given practical tools to enable them to:
- Reduce avoidable hospital readmissions
- Focus on patient centered care
- Decrease medication errors
- Improve patient outcomes
- Increase self-efficacy of patients and family/caregivers
- Identify the relationship between compassion, kindness, and patient satisfaction
- Improve continuity of care by empowering patients and their families to be their own healthcare advocates
The conference was well attended by many different multi-disciplinary members of the Northwest communities including: Physicians, nurses, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, case managers, care navigators, discharge planners, social workers, therapists, and administrators representing hospitals, clinics, skilled nursing, rehabilitation, home health, palliative care, and hospice organizations.
