Strategies and Barriers to Engaging Dual-Eligible Patients in a Hospital Patient and Family Advisory Program

As national efforts intensify to improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs, hospitals search for effective ways to partner with patients and families to achieve these goals. Many are implementing patient and family advisory programs (PFAPs) where patients, families, administrators, and clinicians work together to improve the patient experience. However, hospitals struggle with engaging the underserved-specifically, dual-eligible patients enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid-in PFAPs. This quality improvement project used telephone interviews with 12 dual-eligible beneficiaries and 4 of their providers to identify successful approaches to engage these patients in the hospital PFAP. While none of the participants had direct experience with a PFAP, many of the strategies and barriers identified from their individual care experiences will be used to inform the hospital's plan to engage this patient population in future patient and family engagement efforts.