Central to being an effective commissioner of health services is the ability to use insight to make better investment decisions. Given that the Beacon Strategies team has been involved in a number of evaluation and program reviews in the PHN environment we think it is timely to share a few tips in relation to commissioning effective evaluations and program reviews.

As the 31 PHNs across Australia continue improve their capability and effectiveness in health service commissioning, the current policy setting will require PHNs to apply their commissioning frameworks in a more integrated and collaborative way via co-commissioning.

Given the nature of their role, Primary Health Networks (PHNs) are constantly required to engage effectively with a diverse range of stakeholders. Engagement underpins health needs assessments, regional planning activities, service co-design and program reviews/evaluation to name just a few.

This evaluation explored how well the program had engaged people from CALD backgrounds, if it had led to improvements in mental health and wellbeing, and how the program ‘fits’ within the region’s stepped care model

If you are an organisation seeking to demonstrate your impact, enhance service delivery and better position yourself for future investment, do not go past two critical pieces to the puzzle - monitoring and evaluation. Read a case example of what we did, what we found and what is next for one of our partner organisations.

Patient experience is increasingly recognised as one of the three ‘pillars of quality in healthcare’ alongside clinical effectiveness and patient safety. The health care sector is heavily regulated, however delivering a compliant service does not necessarily translate to a good service experience for the consumer. An increasingly common strategy used by organisations to measure patient experience is to undertake patient journey mapping.

Quite often structured engagement activities are seen as nice-to-have additions to an organisation’s pre-existing repertoire. However in the health and social services sector, specifically in the non-profit arena, the benefits that genuine stakeholder engagement can have on mitigating the negative effects of market competition, public cynicism and perceived transparency are profound.

We’ve recently developed a series of short, low-cost and high-value workshops to support people working in the health and social services sector to better plan, design, implement and evaluate programs.

Market-led approaches to health and social services are considered to be a responsive, innovative and efficient mechanism in meeting the needs of consumers. At Beacon Strategies we were lucky enough to join one of our partner organisations for the journey.