Help Your Patients Engage In Their Health Care

Whether you see patients at a hospital, primary care office, or other setting, time is often limited and patients and family members who have prioritized their questions or concerns will experience the most meaningful, efficient visits. To help you and your patients get the most out of your time together, AHRQ offers these free resources that you can use with your team and share with your patients.

Patient and Family Engagement Resources For Use In Hospitals

Guide to Patient and Family Engagement in Hospital Quality and Safety

This guide provides evidence-based resources that show how hospital staff can work as partners with patients and families to improve quality and safety.

CUSP Toolkit—Patient and Family Engagement Module

CUSP, or the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program, makes patient care safer by improving the ways that all members of the health care team work together. Use this module to help patients and family members understand what's happening during the patient's stay, how they can be active participants in the patient's care, and what to do when they are ready to leave the hospital.

Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) Toolkit

Reducing hospital readmissions is a major policy and patient safety goal. Use this toolkit to help re-engineer your discharge process to reduce readmissions and post-hospital emergency department visits. The toolkit includes reminders about new medications and follow-up visits, along with a new section on overcoming language barriers among patients and clinical staff.

Medications at Transitions and Clinical Handoffs (MATCH) for Medication Reconciliation

Learn about the processes that help detect and prevent medication discrepancies and adverse drug events. The toolkit is based on processes developed in acute care settings, but it can also be used in non-acute care settings.

Guide for Developing a Community-Based Patient Safety Advisory Council

Involving individuals and organizations in a patient safety advisory council can promote change through education, collaboration, and consumer engagement. Councils can involve patients, consumers, and practitioners from health care and community organizations.

Preventing Avoidable Readmissions

Learn about additional resources, such as webinars, training programs, tools, and case studies, to help your hospital team reduce preventable readmissions.

Patient and Family Engagement Resources for Use In Primary Care Offices

AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit

This toolkit offers primary care practices a way to assess their services for health literacy considerations, raise awareness of the entire staff, and work on specific areas.

Internet Citation: Help Your Patients Engage In Their Health Care. January 2015. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/patient-family-engagement/index.html