Community hospitals and co-production
Download (PDF 1.09 MB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Cumbria created a report looking at how effective the co-production had been in its area, specifically looking at the three local community hospitals - Alston, Maryport and Wigton.
The aims of the project were to examine the experiences of representatives of the 'Alliances' of the co-production process, with a view to making recommendations as to how this can be strengthened, and to identify any specific issues about aspects of future service delivery that participants perceive to remain unaddressed.
They conducted focus groups in each of the local community hospital areas and ran an online survey.
Overall findings suggest the co-production process in relation to the community hospitals is relatively well advanced in comparison with that surrounding many of the changes to health and care services underway elsewhere in the county. However, some aspects of co-production in Alston, Maryport and Wigton are less advanced and an effort must be made to resolve these to produce a more detailed template so that community engagement can start on a stronger footing elsewhere.
The report contains eight recommendations, including:
- Specific issues revealed in the survey data that community groups perceive to remain unaddressed must be the subject of further discussion in the near future.
- Health and care organisations need to be actively involved in the co-production training that HWC is developing with Cumbria Learning and Improvement Collaborative (CLIC) so that the learning from their perspective can be incorporated in that project.
- Early, transparent and comprehensive information for each change being co-produced is essential prior to any co-production project. This should include information about cost, quality, recruitment.
The report does not contain a response from the service providers.