The Empowered Patient Coalition provides resources enabling patients to take control of their medical treatments.

Promoting Patient Safety

The Empowered Patient Coalition is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization created by patient advocates devoted to helping the public improve the quality and the safety of their healthcare. The coalition feels strongly that the first crucial steps in both patient empowerment and patient safety efforts are information and education. The public is increasingly aware that they must assume a greater role in health care issues but they need tools, strategies and support to assist them in becoming informed and engaged medical consumers who are able to make a positive impact on health care safety.

Patient Safety Resources

As one of our first projects, the coalition has developed a detailed and comprehensive patient guide to hospital care which will give consumers a blue print for interacting with the health care system in ways that are safe, successful and empowering. Patients will understand how the system works and be able to identify key staff members, learn how to ask the right questions at the appropriate time, build invaluable communication and collaboration skills, and both recognize quality health care and feel comfortable speaking up if their health care needs improvement. The consumer and the patient advocate will learn how to reduce the odds of experiencing medical error and hospital-acquired infection and understand the tremendous impact they can have on patient safety and health care quality.

Supporting the Consumer and the Patient Advocate

It is our intent to help medical patients achieve an increased level of participation to minimize their chances of experiencing medical errors and the many other adverse events that remain a constant challenge in our health care system. We provide the consumer and the patient advocate a clear understanding of the importance of forming interactive partnerships with providers and give them the tools and resources they need to become capable and confident members of the health care team. Ultimately, the public can be a valuable resource for adverse event reporting and should be called upon to help establish guidelines for patient’s rights. Patients will come to the realization that they are the foundation of all patient empowerment efforts and that their input is vital to efforts to achieve important patient safety goals.