Patient Participation

Initial Participatory Needs Analysis

As part of our philosophy of working in partnership, BK Health does not decide which exact services will be offered at the sites until a local participatory needs analysis has been performed and analysed in line with other health needs analysis.

Recognising that the local community partnership will take time to build, sites will carry out, in partnership with local stakeholders, a community participation exercise to assess local health needs and ensure that the service meets the needs of local patients. This is a qualitative technique for community assessment which originated in developing countries to gain insight into a community's own perspective of its needs. A multisectoral team including local health professionals, social workers, and community representatives collect data from several sources: e.g. existing documents about the neighbourhood, interviews with a range of informants, and direct observations about the neighbourhood.

From this information an “information pyramid” describing nine aspects of the community is built. The bottom layer defines the composition of the community, how it was organised, and its capacities to act. The second layer covers the socioecological factors that influence health. The third layer describes the existence, coverage, accessibility, and acceptability of current services and identified areas which needed to be changed. The final layer is concerned with national, regional, and local policies.

Ongoing Patient Participation

From the initial participatory needs analysis, we would expect a number of community leads and community subgroups to emerge. We would expect the team to engage with these groups and leads, perhaps inviting more formal involvement in the practice, through working groups or patient panels. These ensure that the voices of the communities are not drowned out by the noise generated by day-to-day primary care service delivery.