With its reputation for innovation in health care and its integrated structure, Geisinger has in place many elements of a learning healthcare system, a system in which discovery is embedded in the routine processes of care and thereby drives continuous learning and continuous quality improvement, all with the aim of delivering “high value” care. Such a system, as well as such care, crucially depends upon patient and family engagement.
The current research strategic plan embrace’s engagement as fundamental to all forms of discovery, from quality improvement and comparative effectiveness research to health services research and clinical trials. Genomic medicine has taken the lead in this area by actively engaging patients and their families as partners in research rather than subjects of research.
This engagement has allowed exploration of innovation in many areas including consent for participation, inclusion of patient-supplied data to enhance data available from clinical encounters, engagement with patients and families to design tools to enhance return of genomic results and involvement with determining the direction of genomic medicine research through external advisory groups.
US & Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP)