Implementation of Patient Engagement in the Netherlands: A Stimulating Environment within a Large Academic Medical Centre- Best Practices

Patients are the official third party of the Dutch healthcare system, apart from healthcare providers and insurers.  Radboud university medical center (Radboudumc) is a regional centre for specialized secondary care in the Netherlands.  Here innovation is recognized as a decisive factor when it comes to the implementation of patient engagement.  Therefore, all employees are invited to innovate, experiment, fail and implement promising innovations into practice.  In this paper, we demonstrate how this stimulating environment led to a rich collection of patient engagement activities in organizational (re-)design and in educational programs for students and employees.

Best Practices

• Support experimentation - Support the non-homogeneous evolution of engagement in which employees are free and motivated to experiment.  Allow initiatives to fail.
• Involve patients - Build long-term relationships with patients by involving them from the beginning until the end.
• Create a comfortable environment that makes involvement meaningful - For patient engagement at the organizational design and governance levels, ensure that patients stay in their role of patient, guaranteeing that they make a unique and complementary contribution.  For patient engagement at the level of direct care, ensure that each patient is seen as a person, with a unique and complementary perspective on healthcare.
• Prepare and organize - Prepare patients for their efforts in patient engagement and organize patient engagement in a professional manner to ensure that it is valuable to the organization.

The full article can be downloaded below.