How Henry Ford Health’s care transformation initiative created a catalyst for consistency

A discussion on transforming patient education

Effective patient education and engagement strategies are critical to supporting patients across the care continuum and improving health outcomes.

As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, patients today are taking an active role and want more personalization in their care experience. As a result, patient education is an important element of a broader patient engagement strategy

Challenges that led to standardizing patient education across the health system

With so many locations and staff, we found that we were duplicating patient education materials and efforts. As a result, we had differing versions throughout the organization that lacked consistency and standardization. Additionally, we had no way of knowing if patients were viewing materials at home once they left our care.

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Gaining buy-in for a systemwide approach that supports clinician engagement

Henry Ford Health takes a patient-centric approach to care, including comprehensive education to help patients and families make informed decisions about their health. We’re continually looking for ways to raise the bar.

For this effort, we took a system-level approach, communicating our project mission by explaining the “why” and “how” of the impact on frontline staff. Our way forward was clear: standardize content and workloads, share resources, and provide easy access for staff and patients. We needed an approach that ensured clinicians had confidence in the information and the process.

Additionally, because each patient’s learning style is unique, the content delivery should be, too. By providing consistent education to patients throughout their health journeys across all our care settings, we’d accomplish our goal of personalizing their experience.

The importance of governance in patient education

At Henry Ford Health, a robust governance includes a system council which brings IT, frontline staff, and leadership together with patients. For this initiative, our council started by answering questions: What is our education need? Is someone already working on this? Once a gap was identified, we defined what content would be needed.

All content goes through a formal review process to ensure quality materials, including: • Is it written in plain language? • Does it meet grammar and spelling standards? • Does it meet diversity requirements? • Did the right subject matter expert (SME) look at it?

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