Patient Experience

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Tele-Palliative Care Among Underserved Patients: Considerations for Future Research to Ensure Equity for All Patients

Underserved patients have been historically marginalized in health care and may experience extensive barriers to palliative care. Telehealth may be a particularly promising mode of palliative care by engaging patients across long distances and facilitating access to existing palliative care resources.

Julia Bandini, Natalie Ernecoff, et al.

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Promoting Patient-Clinician Conversations to Reduce Cascades of Care

A cascade of care is a seemingly uncontrollable sequence of medical services that is driven by the desire to avoid even the smallest risk of a bad outcome. What drives cascades? And what interventions might mitigate them?

Kathleen L. Mulligan, Ishani Ganguli, et al.

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What Influences Quality Improvement Processes in Health Care?

Periods of rapid change offer both opportunities and challenges for health care quality improvement. Understanding the building blocks that need to be in place to support improvement processes may help those seeking to embed improvement capabilities and capacity into their organisations, both as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Gemma-Claire Ali, Emily Ryen Gloinson, et al.

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Patients Should Have a Role in Deciding the Value of Medicines

Patients, their family members, and the general public have historically been excluded from contributing to health care value assessment models. But methods for including patient voices in research are far less complicated or demanding than some researchers believe they will be.

Thomas W. Concannon @tconcannon, Lori Frank @LoriBethFrank

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Theresa May, Emotional Learning, Teachers: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on Theresa May's resignation, social and emotional learning, the value of a good teacher, and more.

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A New Way to Capture the Patient Experience

Researchers have developed a more effective and reliable way for patients to provide narrative feedback about the care they receive. When the right questions are asked, patients' answers can help health care providers better understand the patient experience and learn how they could improve.

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On Nurse Staffing Ballot Measure, Massachusetts Voters Should Look to Evidence from California

Massachusetts residents will soon vote on the Patient Safety Act, a mandate to increase nurse-to-patient ratios in acute care facilities. Evaluating existing data on the impact of a similar nurse staffing law implemented in California in 2004 may help inform voters as they head to the polls.

Mahshid Abir, Jason E. Goldstick, et al.

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Personalized Hospital Ratings: Transparency for the Internet Age

Each annual release of hospital ratings captivates journalists, hospital leaders, and health care consumers in the United States. These ratings aggregate many measures into a single score for each hospital. But why should the opinions of report creators hold sway, if the intent is to inform patient choice? Why not ask patients instead?

Juliet Rumball-Smith, Jill Gurvey, et al.

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Community Hospitals: A Traditional Solution to Help Today's NHS?

Community hospitals could be better integrated into the current healthcare system in England and can play an important role in the middle of the patient journey between home and hospital. If done correctly, community hospitals could be a traditional solution to help address some of the modern day challenges of the NHS.

Emma Pitchforth, Edwin van Teijlingen, et al.

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Points to Consider When Using Surveys of Cancer Patients

Patient surveys provide unique insights for improving cancer care quality and new opportunities for research. However, features of survey populations such as sampling and early mortality should be accounted for when analyzing the findings.

Catherine L. Saunders, Gary A. Abel

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Improving Care and Support for People Living with Breathlessness

Living with COPD puts a huge burden on patients and their informal caregivers. What measures could improve care and support among these groups?

Morag Farquhar, Peter Burge, et al.

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Debunking Myths About Patient Experience Surveys

Patient experience surveys give patients a voice. They can provide fair and relevant indicators that complement other metrics of health care quality to monitor and improve care.

Rebecca Anhang Price, Marc N. Elliott

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100 Stories, 10 Years, 1 Transformation: A Recent History of NIHR's Impacts on the Health Research Landscape

The National Institute for Health Research is now ten years old. What benefits has it had on the health research landscape in the UK since its formation?

Adam Kamenetzky, Jonathan Grant, et al.

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More Research Is Needed on Artificial Joints and Patients Can Play a Key Role

Safety problems with artificial knees and hips, including product recalls, highlight the need for more patient-centered research. RAND has partnered with CreakyJoints in a project intended to train a group of patients to get involved in research on this topic.

Thomas W. Concannon @tconcannon, Ben Nowell

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Taking an Interest: What Makes Someone Respond to a Survey

Researchers have two main reasons for caring about non-response. First, it is important to ensure that survey findings are unbiased and representative, and second, concern about survey non-response is a key reason given by those who ignore or chose not to act on the findings of research.

Catherine L. Saunders

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How to Help Surveys Have More Impact

How can researchers and the users of survey research move from a knee-jerk dismissal of survey findings to being comfortable trusting and acting on the findings? Likely ways forward include emphasizing the methodology, triangulating the evidence, acknowledging the limitations, and developing good communication and trust between parties.

Catherine L. Saunders

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Can Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Improve Health Care?

A review in 2017 of the adequacy and use of Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Funds will be used to determine whether funding levels should be continued or adjusted after its authorization runs out in 2019. Researchers ought to take stock of the work in patient-centered outcomes research.

Thomas W. Concannon @tconcannon

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Let People Make Their Own End-of-Life Decisions

Major advances in health technology have helped people to live longer, but not necessarily better, lives. Medicare recently announced plans to reimburse providers for time spent counseling patients and their caregivers about the kind of care patients would want to receive near the end of their lives.

Sangeeta C. Ahluwalia @AhluwaliaPhD, Neil S. Wenger, et al.

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Caregivers in England Report Poorer Health and Healthcare Experiences

Caregivers in England have poorer health-related quality of life than non-caregivers, reporting an average of 11 fewer days of full health per year.

Catherine L. Saunders

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More Long-Term Health Conditions, Poorer Health Care Experiences

Patients with multiple long-term health conditions are more likely to report poorer experiences in primary care than those with fewer health problems. A patient-centered model that takes into account the severity of disease — and the impact of combinations of diseases, on patient quality of life and health care experiences — could make a difference.

Catherine L. Saunders, Charlotte Paddison

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The Statistician Is In: Q&A with Marc Elliott

Statistician Marc Elliott talks about the real-world impact his work has had, how his discipline lets him 'play in everyone else's sandbox,' and more.

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The Great Patient Experience Survey Myth

Patient experience with care is an essential element in any assessment of health care quality. Surveys give patients a voice and provide fair and relevant indicators that complement other metrics of health care quality to inform patients' choices and providers' decisions about how to improve care.

Rebecca Anhang Price, Marc N. Elliott

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Putting Patients First Can Result in Better Care Overall

Better patient care experiences are associated with higher levels of adherence to recommended prevention and treatment processes, better clinical outcomes, better patient safety within hospitals, and less health care utilization.

Rebecca Anhang Price, Marc N. Elliott, et al.

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Creating More Savvy Consumers Through Public Reporting

Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys are designed to capture patients' experiences in a systematic way that facilitates reporting the results publicly to help other consumers make more savvy care decisions. Consumer choices may influence providers to improve the care they offer so that they can effectively compete in the market.

Mary E. Vaiana

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Giving “Voice” to Nursing Home Residents: A Revolution in Quality Assessment

It seems obvious to ask nursing home residents about their own health. But until a quiet revolution that took place in 2010, it didn't work that way.

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Using Patient Surveys to Rate Hospitals

Hospitals that perform better on the survey tend to do better on clinical measures, have fewer readmissions within 30 days and have lower risk-adjusted mortality, write Marc Elliott and Alan Zaslavsky.

Marc N. Elliott, Alan M. Zaslavsky