26 Jun 2020
Health Consumers Queensland has been facilitating Consumer Conversations since 25 March to hear directly from consumers during COVID-19. Since then we have held 26 sessions with more than 500 consumers. The early conversations were during a lot of uncertainty as public health restrictions were being imposed and we simply asked “what is working, what isn’t and what are you concerned about?” As the curve began to flatten, we refined the conversations to focus on specific topics, based on what we were hearing from consumers. Consumers routinely identified early key issues for the community, which we were able to feed through to the health system. This enabled the system to respond in the knowledge of consumer insights and expectations.
Read the full summary >
19 Jun 2020
COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on mental health service provision in Queensland like never before, as people grapple with prolonged social isolation, fear and uncertainty, unemployment, restricted access to health care, home-schooling, withdrawal of support and services, and many reporting feeling forgotten by the government and its pandemic responses.
Currently Queensland Health provides mostly acute mental health care services but some consumers consider the scale of the mental health crisis facing the public health system is “another pandemic in itself”.
In every single one of the 24 Consumer conversations we have hosted since March, over 400 consumers have shared their concerns about people’s mental health at this time.
In this week’s Consumer Conversations we asked:
- What have you learned about the current mental health system during COVID-19?
- What do you think is working?
- What do you think could be improved?
They told us that a prescriptive, inflexible and reactive approach to mental health care is not working – or helping. Consumers want tailored, individualised care and communication and a system which prioritises and values preventative mental health care measures.
Continue reading eAlert >
19 Jun 2020
COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on mental health service provision in Queensland like never before, as people grapple with prolonged social isolation, fear and uncertainty, unemployment, restricted access to health care, home-schooling, withdrawal of support and services, with many reporting feeling forgotten by the government and its pandemic responses.
Currently Queensland Health provides mostly acute mental health care services but some consumers consider the scale of the mental health crisis facing the public health system is “another pandemic in itself”.
Consumers told us that a prescriptive, inflexible and reactive approach to mental health care is not working – or helping. They want tailored, individualised care and communication and a system which prioritises and values preventative mental health care measures.
Ultimately, their vision is for a strong, integrated mental health system for everyone which is well-funded, resourced and staffed by skilled and well-trained professionals.
Read the Issues Paper on the Mental Health System >
12 Jun 2020
The message from Queensland Health is that we need more people tested for COVID-19, but consumer continue to be unclear about eligibility for testing, what testing entails, and what measures need to be taken either side of having a test. Many are reluctant to seek out testing if they are only showing mild symptoms, with the thought of isolation another disincentive.
While the Queensland Health COVID-19 site was given the thumbs-up by many as a good source of fact, inconsistencies between local and state information is compounding uncertainty on what to do. Most agreed that we should look to the tried and true strategies used during natural disasters, with regular centralized government messaging and local radio and news broadcasts nominated as the key vehicles for getting information out to the public.
Read the Issues Paper >
5 Jun 2020
This week we hosted two Consumer Conversations to seek the consumer view of what Queensland Health’s Funding Priorities should be for 2020/2021. In all, 42 consumers were involved from our our COVID-19 Community of Interest Group, members of the Health Consumers Collaborative of Queensland and our own Consumer Advisory Group (CAG) as well as HHS CAG Leaders and consumer representatives from some of the Statewide Clinical Network Steering Committees.
While talking about the proposed priorities for the next financial year, it was clear that health consumers are ready for some major changes in health. The recent Queensland Clinical Senate meeting also demonstrated a parallel appetite for change by clinicians in the health system too.
Consumers identified major reforms to long-held traditions and ways of addressing health care including:
- the way patients are categorized for care (not just triaged by clinical need/clinically appropriate wait times, but in the context of complexities in their lives)
- re-imagining HHS borders to better reflect referral pathways that work for consumers
- the way healthcare is funded (outcomes, rather than volume)
- collaborating with consumers to design new models of care, service improvements and funding models as well as when providing them with individual care
- actively addressing the social and cultural determinants of health and the systems barriers that keep some people in a cycle of poverty and ill-health.
Above all, consumers want fair, equitable and maximum access to health care services for every Queenslander.
Continue reading eAlert >
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