We will use this focus as we continue work on our current priorities; convening and aligning the community, ensuring safe transitions and strengthening relationships between patients and their care teams to foster safety.

A growing body of evidence and industry best practices indicates that engaged patients receive higher quality and safer care with better outcomes. Patients, clients, families, and caregivers play a significant role in discovering defects, preventing problems, and improving care delivery. However, we also know that care organizations in Minnesota have varying levels of infrastructure, programmatic support, and knowledge to advance engagement.

MAPS' next phase of work will build on "Your Own Best Medicine," which provided tools to engage patients and providers at the personal interaction level. This upcoming work will aim to provide resources for engagement at the organizational level. It will also help ensure appropriate patient/family representation and involvement on organization's advisory, safety, and quality committees. In recent weeks, we have conducted thorough interviews with a variety of care settings to better understand the current state of programs. This fall, we will be forming a planning committee comprised of organization and patient/resident/family representatives to help design initial tool(kits) to be used by the community.

If you would like to be involved in this initial planning committee and provide input and design feedback for tool(kits)/resources, please contact Catherine Schramm, MAPS Project Consultant. We are excited to start this new phase of work with you!