Susan Frampton
Susan B. Frampton, PhD
Susan Frampton is the President of Planetree International, a non-profit advocacy and membership organization that works with a growing network of healthcare provider organizations across the continuum to implement comprehensive person-centered models of care.
Dr. Frampton, a medical anthropologist, has authored numerous publications, including the three editions of Putting Patients First (Jossey-Bass 2004, 2008, 2013), and served as lead author on the National Academy of Medicine’s Harnessing Evidence and Experience to Change Culture, released in early 2017.
Dr. Frampton chaired the National Academy of Medicine’s Scientific Advisory Panel on the Evidence Base for PatientCentered Care, which led to this ground-breaking publication. The resulting guiding framework for patient and family engaged care definitively answers the often posed question of whether resource investment in this area leads to better health outcomes. The quadruple aim of better culture, better care, better health and lower costs is clearly tied to a compelling collection of qualitative and quantitative evidence.
Dr. Frampton leads Planetree’s advocacy efforts, currently chairs the National Quality Forum’s National Quality Partners Leadership Consortium, and has co-chaired NQF Action Teams on Advanced Illness Care, Patient-Family Engagement, and Decreasing Hospital (Re)Admissions. She serves on the Governing Board for the WHO-CC International Network of Health Promoting Hospitals, and the editorial board for the Journal of Compassionate Healthcare.
In addition to speaking internationally on culture change, quality, safety, and the patient experience, she was honored in 2009, when she was named one of “20 People who Make Healthcare Better” by Health Leaders Magazine.
Related Links
Susan's CV
Planetree's Latest Book
Selected Articles
Sharing the Treatment Decisions
Time to Embrace a New Patient-Centered Care Rallying Cry: "Why Not?"
Case Study
Featured Presentations
Harnessing Evidence and Experience to Change Healthcare Culture: A Guiding Framework for Patient and Family Engaged Care
Patient and family engaged care (PFEC) has been identified as a cornerstone of the national strategy for delivering healthcare that results in better health at lower costs. But despite efforts to make PFEC a predominant feature in all healthcare interactions, it continues to be an aspirational aim. And so it will remain in the absence of 1.) clear direction on the specific, high impact elements necessary to create, sustain and measure a culture of PFEC; and 2.) a persuasive evidence base compelling healthcare practitioners and leaders to change business as usual.
To address these persistent barriers, in 2016, the National Academy of Medicine convened a group of clinical and health service researchers, healthcare professionals and patient and family leaders to collaborate on the development of a Guiding Framework for Patient and Family Engaged Care. The framework depicts how a broad array of culture change strategies work together to yield results for better health, better care, greater value and better healthcare cultures. The multi-stakeholder development process yielded a framework that takes a broader view than previous patient and family engagement (PFE) frameworks through the inclusion of often overlooked dimensions of workplace culture, the physical environment, the quality of human interactions, communication approaches and other PFEC levers that impact healthcare culture, quality, experience and value.
The guiding framework will be presented in this session, along with the evidence in support of its various elements. In addition, the presentation will share how the tool can be used to accelerate the advancement of PFEC, promote effective partnerships among healthcare executives and patient and family leaders, and guide broader policy efforts intended to pave the way for patient and family engaged care to become the norm in healthcare.
The Brave New World of Patient and Family Engagement-2016 Policy and Practice Update
The engagement of patients and families in the design and coordination of health care services at the levels of policy, organization and direct delivery has become a centerpiece of current healthcare improvement efforts. Legislation supporting, and in some instances mandating, explicit and meaningful involvement is accelerating internationally, regionally and locally through efforts tied to the Affordable Care Act, including the CMS Partnership for Patients, Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH), Value-Based Purchasing and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Dr. Susan Frampton, patient rights advocate, patient-centered policy expert, and president of Planetree – the oldest patient and family engagement non-profit in the US, sits at the center of this movement. Dr. Frampton, a medical anthropologist, currently co-chairs the National Quality Forum’s National Quality Partnership Leadership Consortium, and chaired the National Academy of Medicine’s Scientific Advisory Panel on the Evidence-Base for Patient-Engaged Care. She understands what it takes to translate both research and policy into change strategies that deliver the practical outcomes our healthcare system is committed to accomplishing in the quest to reach the Quadruple Aim.
Quality Checking Your Patient and Family Engagement Strategies
What do Medicare Shared Savings/ACO regulations, Patient Centered Medical Home standards, and Meaningful Use thresholds have in common? They all require the engagement of patients in their own health care, and have thus catapulted Patient Family Engagement- PFE- to the top of many healthcare providers’ priority lists. But PFE will not occur simply by providing information to consumers. Patients and families have experienced a system of patriarchal care that has created passivity, and in some cases fear of retribution for being labeled “difficult”. Deep culture change efforts are necessary to address the environment –both physical and emotional - in which care is delivered. Concurrently, finding ways to motivate patients and families to seek out and use relevant information as they actively participate in their care requires not only a change in the patient, but a change to the processes and expectations of organizations across the continuum of care. It requires the adoption of new perspectives and practices at the level of policy, organization, and individual care. It also requires a framework with which to organize actions so that priorities can be set in an efficient and effective manner.
There exists today an overwhelming plethora of potential engagement approaches, ideas, and activities for providers to choose from. Many changes in practice have been put in place at both organizational and direct care levels, but little is done to assure that these initiatives remain active, effective, and impactful. Ensuring that your PFE strategies are the right ones, in the right place, at the right time is critical. Employing the right tools and strategies for quality checking your PFE tactics will ensure that resources are dedicated to well-aligned undertakings that achieve demonstrable outcomes.
