Improving the coordination among the various settings and care providers along the healthcare continuum can improve patient safety, quality of care, and health outcomes while avoiding significant costs, minimizing inappropriate readmissions, and reducing patient and family frustration, emotional distress and dissatisfaction. By definition, transitions of care involve multiple settings or providers of care.

    Human resources systems play a pivotal role in cultivating and preserving a strong culture, beginning with hiring individuals whose personal values and approach to their work aligns with the organizational culture. Compiled from interview questions used by Planetree Gold Certified healthcare organizations, this tool provides questions to help hiring managers vet those who

    Process improvement is a systematic approach to continuously try to do things better within an organization. Pretty simple concept, right? And yet process improvement can become very complicated very quickly given all the specialized terminology and systems that have become associated with it. These tools, terms and step-by-step processes all serve an important

    No Pass Zones are patient care areas where the expectation has been explicitly established that all staff will respond to call lights – as opposed to that responsibility being relegated to individuals in a specific role. This ten-question self-assessment to helps teams evaluate whether implementation of a No Pass Zone initiative is well

    This toolkit provides guidance to physician practices on creating a practice culture that emphasizes and incorporates the patient and family perspective in every aspect of care, to ultimately improve quality of care. It was developed by Planetree International and the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative Support & Alignment Network.    

    Inadvertent or not, the language we use creates the world that individuals experience when they interact with the healthcare system. This brief discussion paper examines how common language used in healthcare can undermine efforts to deliver person-centered care. A list of 20 words and phrases to retire from healthcare can be used to

    Long-term care communities have a long history of institutionalized dining characterized by rigid meal times and limited choices. This Open Dining Guide was developed by Planetree International to support organizations in assessing how resident-centered their approach to open dining really is, and to identify opportunities for better aligning structures, practices, and culture around

    The journey of advanced care planning can be long and often complex. From making decisions while healthy to ensuring wishes are met at the end of life, each step has different considerations and conversations. This decisional framework for advance care planning, co-developed by Planetree International and the Connecticut Center for Patient Safety, supports

    This day-to-day rounding tool is designed to support nurse managers in getting a more comprehensive look at unit activity in real time. It centers on 12 simple questions that address a broad range of patient needs and preferences – including sleep, pain, understanding of the care plan and more.    

    Communicating consistently between shifts in long-term and post-acute care environments can often be a challenge due to changes in staffing, a mixture of acute and existing diagnoses and individual interpretation of what is vital information to exchange. This easy to use 24-hour report sheet enhances communication between nurses, assures compliance of documentation and