Engaging patients and caregivers to design transitional care management services at a minority serving institution

Limited socioeconomic resources contribute to high readmission rates at minority serving institutions (MSIs). A better understanding of patient-level factors and need for patient navigators could inform approaches to enhance care transitions tailored to these vulnerable patient populations. We sought to understand the perspectives of patients and their caregivers about hospital to home transitions from an MSI, as well as their attitudes about patient navigators to facilitate care transitions. We conducted qualitative research using focus groups (FGs)—five disease-specific patient FGs and two caregiver FGs, including 23 patients and 10 caregivers. Findings support the need for additional services to address: (1) gaps in the hospital discharge; (2) socioeconomic resources; (3) access to post-discharge care; (4) patient’s health care seeking behaviors; (5) patient anxiety; (6) self-management education; and (7) social supports for patients and caregivers. While caregivers uniformly expressed interest in patient navigators, support for navigators among patients was more variable.