Strengthening consumer involvement in healthcare

We want your help to improve consumer engagement in healthcare.

What's being decided?

We are partnering with South Australian health consumers to reflect and determine how we can improve consumers’ engagement in creating better health care for South Australians.

Consumer engagement refers to health consumers, their family and carers, actively participating in:

• their own individual care
• healthcare planning and decision making
• evaluating policy governance and safety and quality processes
• healthcare monitoring and evaluation.

(Definition Source: SA Health Consumer, Carer and Community Engagement – Strategic Framework 2021-2025).

We ask you to provide your thoughts on 2 topics:

• What is meaningful consumer engagement, how do we know we are achieving it and how do we measure it?
• What could the future of consumer engagement look like in South Australia?

Background

Imagine a health system where people are truly at the centre, where everyone has access to the latest evidence and data to make the best decisions, where innovation is encouraged and it is safe to think big and try new things, where no task is done in isolation but instead achieved through partnership and collaboration.

To achieve this, it is important that first, solutions are co-designed by healthcare consumers, healthcare workers and the broader community – bringing together diverse opinions and perspectives. Therefore, it is critical that consumers are supported to be able to meaningfully contribute to creating better healthcare.

We encourage you to watch keynote speaker presentations/notes from Sarah Brown at the Purple House and Associate Professor Christine Dennis to provide some inspiration around consumer engagement and what the future could look like. These presentations were central to a CEIH Consumer Forum event held in Adelaide on 14 December 2021, where we gathered consumers to ask for their feedback, as we are doing now.

Get involved

For inspiration:

• watch the video of Sarah Brown at Purple House
• review presentation notes from Christine Dennis: "What could the future look like?"

Have your say by:

• taking our survey
• asking a question

What are the next steps?

We will consider all feedback and ideas, to finalise a report summarising future opportunities for meaningful consumer engagement in healthcare in South Australia, highlighting key thoughts and discussion from our consultations (such as this YourSAy engagement and the 14 December 2021 Consumer Forum).