Essentia Health is committed to partnering with patients and families to improve the care it delivers, the services it provides, and the outcomes of its patients. To achieve these goals, Essentia Health created its Patients and Families as Partners Program in 2008. The program now includes 14 patient and family advisory councils in primary and specialty care as well as four patient-to-patient mentor programs. Patient and family partners also are engaged in more than 15 organizational committees and task forces across the health system, including the Administrative Committee for Primary Care.

Essentia Health didn’t mandate all clinics to integrate patient partners but began instead building capacity in its larger clinics. The clinics began recruiting and vetting patients and then creating ways for them to be involved.  Now, almost seven years later, 14 of 68 clinics have established Patient and Family Advisory Councils. 

The Essentia Health-Ashland Clinic was one of the first clinics to integrate patient partners and create a Patient and Family Advisory Council. The Wisconsin clinic offers a full spectrum of primary and specialty care services, including orthopedics. It is also home to a cancer center and heart center that are satellites of Essentia centers in Duluth, Minn. Many specialists also regularly travel from Duluth to provide outreach services at the Ashland Clinic, which keeps care close to home for patients and their families. In addition, the clinic has a close working relationship with nearby Memorial Medical Center so residents have access to even more services, including 24-hour emergency care.

Ashland’s Patient and Family Advisory Council has been meeting monthly for more than five year, with eight to nine advisors typically attending each meeting. Over the years, advisors have contributed to a number of clinic initiatives including:

• Review of patient information and media materials
• Way-finding
• Revised process for patient check-out
• On-site MyHealth (Essentia’s electronic patient portal) training for patients
• Staff dress code policy

Most recently, the Patient and Family Advisory Council played a significant role in the design of a new state-of-the-art clinic that opened in May 2016.  Council members met with architects, made suggestions for aesthetic environment attributes, including art selection, paint color and flooring options. They also did hard-hat walk-throughs as the clinic was constructed.