Developing an evaluation tool for the impact of consumer partnerships in healthcare governance: a coproduced mixed methods study.

Abstract

Background: Consumer partnerships are a recent innovation in healthcare governance to diversify decision-making perspectives. These partnerships bring complexity necessitating comprehensive evaluation. This study proposes that evaluation tools should include the impact of healthcare governance partnerships. This study aimed to coproduce an impact evaluation tool for healthcare governance committee partnerships.

Methods: This study used a coproduced mixed methods cross-sectional design conducted in two phases. The first study phase included an online focus group and online survey to identify stakeholder expectations and needs for an impact evaluation design. The second study phase used an adapted Jandhyala Method to determine participant awareness of governance committee partnership impacts and consensus agreement to establish an impact evaluation survey. The development of governance committee partnership impact items was guided by a capability development framework for successful staff and consumer partnerships for quality improvement and the Engage with Impact Toolkit.

Results: In phase one, staff (n=4) and consumer partners (n=3) provided recommendations to improve the development and acceptance of a governance committee partnership impact evaluation. Phase two was completed by 34 participants (>90% completion). An initial online survey generated 338 statements detailing broad governance committee partnership impacts. No statistically significant difference in the count of impacts by Engage with Impact Toolkit domains was found between staff and consumer partners. A second online survey resulted in a consensus ranking of 24 impact statements for inclusion. The highest consensus impact domains are knowledge, confidence and trust, equity and inclusivity and patient outcomes and experience.

Conclusion: This study pragmatically used the insights of expert staff and consumer partners to develop a prioritised list of survey items to evaluate the impact of healthcare governance committee partnering effectiveness. The resulting healthcare governance committee partnership impact evaluation item list has the potential to be used in other healthcare organisations.