In the pursuit of fully integrated, interdisciplinary healthcare, the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) aims to engage patients and their families as equal partners in the healthcare process. To achieve this, CFHA recognizes the importance of family-centered care and seeks to support healthcare teams and stakeholders in implementing family-centered approaches. This resource compiles best practices for those who shape family engagement in the healthcare process, including clinicians, clinical administrators, medical educators, behavioral health educators, researchers, EHR developers and analysts, payors, and policymakers.

What is family-centered care?

Family-centered care (FCC) is an approach to health care that actively includes the patient’s family as an integral part of the care plan, recognizing the systemic impact of patients’ home environment and relationships on health and well-being.  In this biopsychosocial approach, the patient’s support system is viewed as a vital resource to enhance a healthcare team’s ability to provide high-quality health care.

In FCC, ‘family’ is defined by the patient, and each patient determines how they would like their family to be involved in their health care. FCC can be practiced with or without family present; even when family are not present, health care professionals can assess family members’ roles and perspectives related to the patient’s health and incorporate this information into their collaborative treatment planning.

Why is it important?

Research on family engagement in care has documented many benefits to patients and family members, including:

• Decreased stress, depression, and anxiety in patients
• Greater patient satisfaction with care
• Better understanding of their condition and treatment plan
• More proactive attitude toward their health condition
• More active participation in decision-making
• Improved adherence to the treatment plan
• Improved self-management of their condition
• Shorter hospital stays
• Improved family member satisfaction with care and reduced stress

FCC is a key component of comprehensive, value-driven care and can be applied within today’s team-based care delivery models (e.g., Advanced Primary Care, Collaborative Care Model, Primary Care Behavioral Health) to achieve high-quality health care for patients and their families.

Many changes are needed across the healthcare system to better support the delivery of FCC.

These documents compile a set of actionable recommendations to guide tangible changes across each level of the healthcare system:

• Clinicians (all disciplines)
• Clinical Administrators
• Medical Educators
• Behavioral Health Educators
• Researchers and Funders
• Electronic Health Record (EHR) Developers
• Payors
• Policymakers

Through a shared understanding of the value of FCC, these healthcare stakeholders can work collaboratively to advance FCC as the standard of care, improving health outcomes and reducing costs.