Resources

A ready reckoner for evolving consumer engagement from ‘informing’ to ‘empowering’. Includes a meaningful ‘promise’ to consumers at each participation level that clarifies the outcome of achieving each engagement level.

Consumers’ perspectives and active engagement are critical to making health systems safer and more person-centred. Consumers, families, caregivers and the community can contribute towards improving care-related safety at the clinical (local), institutional (e.g., hospital, nursing home), community (e.g., primary care, home care) and national (in the development of national policies) levels of healthcare systems.

Involving patients and families in healthcare decisions about patient care and in hospital and health system policy/programs has been shown to hold many benefits for consumers and health services. This partnering of patients and families with healthcare professionals is often called “patient and family engagement”, although this term does not have a standard definition and may not describe the best practices for achieving partnership.

Where do we start to increase consumer satisfaction in a seemingly endless sea of consumer touchpoints? Sometimes we put a lot of time and effort into improving things with little satisfaction or ‘bang for buck’. Sometimes we focus on what we think the problems are from our interpretation of feedback data – which may or may not reap satisfaction benefits. There are also confounding factors such as consumer age and health status that can confuse and tilt results.

Partnering with consumers in the planning, delivery and evaluation of health services is an essential component of person-centred care. There are many ways to partner with consumers to improve health services, including formal group partnerships (such as committees, boards or steering groups). However, consumer and health providers' views and experiences of formal group partnerships remain unclear. In this qualitative evidence synthesis of 33 studies, the authors focus specifically on formal group partnerships where health providers and consumers share decision-making about planning, delivering and/or evaluating health services, looking at the pros and cons and what supports success.

The East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) has dived deeply into partnering with consumers for service improvement. ELFT provides mental health and community services to a diverse population in over 100 community and inpatient sites.  

The tools provide audits and information for assessing the quality of end-of-life care to support care process improvement.

The importance of consumer advocacy in person-centred healthcare is growing. In Australia, the role of the "Consumer Representative" - often a current or past patient of the health service, or carer - is to improve service planning, healthcare design, service evaluation and advocate for patients and their families' needs, improve. As consumer partnerships are evolving, so too is the role of the Consumer Representative. Understanding how this role is evolving is key to supporting it to be useful and effective.

The critical importance of complaint handling is as strong as ever. Being able to raise a grievance or complaint is a fundamental human right. Engaging effectively and respectfully with complaints is about engaging effectively and respectfully with the community and being willing to improve the quality of care.

Compassionate care is central to person-centred care. Along with the safety and cost reductions associated with person-centred care, placing the person at the centre of their care and keeping them informed is the right thing to do.