Patient and family advisors

MultiCare Yakima Memorial Hospital provides the opportunity for patient and family advisors to provide direct input on what is most important to them about their care. In this way, they can help implement meaningful and effective quality and safety improvements.

Who can participate?

You can be an advisor if you or a family member received health care services in the last five years. You do not need any special qualifications to be an advisor.

What’s most important is your experience as a patient or family member. We will provide you with any other training you need.

Council members are encouraged to communicate and cooperate in productive ways, respecting diversity and differing opinions, in order to collaborate on solutions. Members must adhere to confidentiality requirements and other responsibilities of the program. All members must be 18 years of age or older.

Why should I get involved?

When you or your family member was in the hospital, did you think there were things we could have done better? Do you have ideas about how to make sure other patients and families get the best care possible? Those are both great reasons to join.

Apply to volunteer

There are several ways you can serve as a patient & family advisor

Special projects

Patient and family advisors bring important perspective to special projects by:

• Participating in brainstorming and creativity activities with the staff that do the work
• Sharing the patient perspective
• Reviewing and learning about current processes

Special projects advisors may be asked to join include:

• Participating in discussion groups. MultiCare Yakima Memorial Hospital can gather patient and family advisors together for a meeting to get feedback on a specific process or resource for patients and families.
• Revising or helping create educational or informational materials for patients and families. Patient and family advisors can work with Memorial to help create or revise forms, letters, handouts, instructions and other materials.
• Serving on a committee or workgroup. Hospital or unit committees and workgroups can invite patient and family advisors to participate for a short time period to get feedback and ideas on a specific topic.

Time commitments for special projects range from a one-time meeting to several key meetings in a row.

Process improvement

Patient and family advisors bring important perspective to special projects by:

• Brainstorming and creativity activities with staff that do the work
• Direct observations where the work is being done
• Actively testing ideas with a team
• Sharing the patient perspective
• Reviewing and learning of current processes

Process improvement opportunities for patient and family advisors include:

• Personal interview (one to two hours)
• Panel participation (one to three hours)
• Visioning Day (one-day event)
• Kaizen Event (two-day event)
• Rapid Process Improvement Workshop (five-day event)

Advisory council

The MultiCare Yakima Memorial Hospital Patient & Family Advisory Council is a formal group of patient and family representatives, clinicians, administrators, and organizational leaders that meet once a month to discuss issues that matter. It’s an opportunity to offer feedback about how we’re doing and to share ideas for improvement.

Memorial leaders and clinicians use the information and recommendations generated from these discussions to continually improve patient and family care throughout the organization.

The Patient & Family Advisory Council meets one time each month for 1.5 hours. During those meetings, advisory council members:

• Help ensure the community has a voice in how health care is administered in the Yakima Valley
• Collaborate to improve the quality of service we provide
• Help evaluate policies, programs and practices to identify opportunities to improve patient and family satisfaction
• Generate and discuss new ideas to drive initiatives