Family Members Influence Quality and Delivery of Care for Heart Failure Patients

There is a fundamental gap in how the presence of family companions in medical visits influences indicators of quality of care, such as patient-centered communication (e.g., communication that reflects respect for patients’ values and incorporates patient’s concerns and preferences into decision-making), specifically for patients with heart failure- a particularly vulnerable population by virtue of its high morbidity and mortality. The long-term goals of this project are to improve the quality and delivery of care and subsequent health outcomes for Heart Failure (HF patients). The overall objective here, which is our next step in pursuit of our long-term goal, is to determine whether family accompaniment influences processes of care within the medical visit and use this information to inform intervention development. The rationale for the proposed research is that once we know how family members influence quality and delivery of care we can fulfill the call to action of policy makers and health care models to “create an integrated, coherent plan for ongoing medical care in partnership with patients and their families.

 

Principal Investigator: Crystal Wiley Cene, MD, MPH

Funding: NIH

Total Project Period: 06/14/11-04/30/14