The Symphony of Consumer Partnering and Clinical Governance: An Organizational Review Using the RE-AIM Framework

Introduction

Partnering with Consumers in healthcare systems is now widely accepted and mandated in many countries. Despite this acceptance, there is minimal information regarding the best practice of how to successfully establish systems to embed this practice into healthcare systems.

Methods

This evaluation used the RE-AIM implementation framework to retrospectively analyse data from a 3-year timeline to review the events relating to the transition of Consumer Partnering into a Clinical Governance Unit. Data was sourced via Phase 1 – a focus group to establish a 3-year timeline of events, enablers and barriers, and Phase 2 – a quantitative and qualitative semi-structured interview to review systems that had been developed to support embedding partnering with consumers into Clinical Governance.

Results

Five primary enablers and five barriers to successfully embedding a Consumer Partnering Team into a Clinical Governance Unit were identified. Enablers included Executive sponsorship and ownership of the value of partnering with consumers, Executive leadership influence on local area uptake, an organization-wide network, valuing via remuneration, and a centralized orientation and onboarding programme for Consumer Partners. Barriers included skills and attitudes of committee chairs, the size of the Directorate (smaller local areas can be easier to influence change), patient feedback data requires interpretation to be useful, staff turnover can reduce the relationships with Consumer Partners, and financial insecurity is a barrier to implementation and maintenance.

Conclusions

This article described how an Australian Health Service embedded a Consumer Partnering Team into a Clinical Governance Unit to ensure that partnering became business as usual practice. Enablers, barriers, and unintended consequences can be used as learnings for other organizations to develop a similar approach.

Patient or Public Contribution

Two Consumer Partners with lived experience of the health service, and members of the organizations committee structures are part of the evaluation team. As team members, the consumers participated as equal contributors in evaluation design, analysis of the focus group and interview data, and contribution to the writing and review of the manuscript. Two Consumer Partners with lived experience of the health service, and members of the committee structures participated in the focus groups and the interviews.