Search Results for: health information

A long awaited win in sight for transparency on health costs

Posted on March 17, 2025

By Clare Mullen, Executive Director

Today – 17 March 2025 – the Federal Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler – is speaking to a range of media outlets about his announcement that, if re-elected, a Federal Labor Government will be publishing the costs of specialist medical fees on the Government’s Medical Costs Finder website.

But wait – isn’t that the website that was set up in 2019 to do exactly that? Well, yes. But it wasn’t mandatory for doctors to add their information. And so only 70 of them did. Out of approximately 11,000 specialists in Australia.

As I highlighted in this blog article last May, it’s important that consumers – in this case patients – have access to cost information in order to make their decision about where to get specialist treatment.

Health Consumers’ Council WA represents the interest of consumers, and WA consumers particularly, on the Federal Government’s Out of Pocket Costs Transparency Reference Group. Through that group, we advocated that any health service provider that receives public funding should be required to publish their pricing information on the Medical Costs Finder website.

We hope that whoever is in Government after the next election will follow through on this commitment to patient and consumer power and ensure people can make informed decisions about specialist healthcare.

Opinion: It’s time for full transparency on who’s making money out of our healthcare

Health consumer priorities in the WA state election

Posted on March 6, 2025

This is a follow on from our blog post outlining our priorities and listing the election commitments from the two major parties against those priorities.

Based on our discussions with consumers HCC’s priorities for health are:

  • Increased access to affordable primary care
  • Increased investment in things that help us stay healthy (preventative measures)
  • Continued improvement in the safety, efficiency and capacity of the hospital system
  • Improved access to health care in the community and closer to home.

Many of our allies in the health consumer and lived experience sector have published their specific requests for election time.  Their answers tell an interesting story of a sector where incredible work could be done if there was adequate funding, but also where there are some excellent, innovative ideas that would not be particularly costly to implement.

Let’s have a look at what’s being asked for:

Carers WA Carers Count at the 2025 State Election | Carers WA

  • $400,000 Carer hardship and carer respite grants program for WA Carers
  • Establish a Carers card
  • A new carers strategy
  • $890 000 support for young carers in regional areas
  • Establish a service navigation system for carers

Aboriginal Health Council of WA WA State Election: AHCWA’s Key Priorities – AHCWA

  • Culturally safe short stay accommodation for pregnant women
  • Affordable and appropriate housing
  • Funding for Aboriginal Environmental Health Model of care and community capacity building for remote maintenance
  • Free dental care for all Aboriginal people in WA
  • Social and emotional wellbeing and family and domestic and sexual violence program funding
  • Improved child development services
  • PATS Coordinator in each region

Developmental Disability WA Election Undertakings 2025 for people with intellectual disability

  • Introduce mandatory training on intellectual disabilities for all health staff.
  • Set up Specialist Disability Health Hubs in each health region to improve the health and mental health of PwID.
  • Ensure the State health plan includes PwID as a priority group.
  • Introduce a “flag” to identify intellectual disability in a person’s WA health record
  • Contribute to a WA Easy Read website that provides key public information about health and other government services.

Consumers of Mental Health WA Election 2025: An Election for Mental Health – Consumers of Mental Health WA

  • An alternative to Emergency departments for people in emotional crisis
  • Increase finding to co designed community and peer led mental health services
  • Independent review, co-led by people with lived experience, on strategies to eliminate force, seclusion and restraint
  • Enhance access to advocacy through mental health advocacy service
  • Commit to a human rights act for WA
  • Secure and sustainable funding to pilot Aboriginal community controlled services
  • Embark on funded commitment to the Gayaa Dhuwi declaration implementation plan

Council on the Ageing WA 2025 Election Platform  – Council On The Ageing WA

  • Waive stamp duty for people aged over 65
  • Incorporate Silver Housing Standards in the WA Building Code
  • Expand the supply of affordable housing
  • Introduce a $150 “Fit for Life” voucher for seniors, modelled on the Kidsport initiative
  • Fund a “Preparing for the Unexpected” program to support seniors who are likely to be hospitalised due to a complex health issue or frailty
  • Fund a falls prevention program
  • Provide ongoing $250 000 per annum to Council on the Ageing WA

These priorities have been informed by health consumers, people with lived experience, and input from members of the above organisations. Amplifying and championing the voices of consumers and people with lived experience leads to better outcomes, whether that be in policy development or program delivery.

Including consumer voices goes beyond consultation, it means properly involving people who use the health system to help all of us to understand and address the unfairness in the system.  

What we see when we look at this list is a commitment to important preventative health projects, and projects that would make our health system fairer for all.

These ideas would all contribute to healthier, more connected community members, who are receiving the assistance they need in their communities. This in turn improves the patient experience in our health system and reduces the pressure on the public hospital system meaning that those who need healthcare can get it promptly.

If you’ve any thoughts about any of these, please contact Bronwyn Ife at bronwyn.ife@hconc.org.au

Digital Health Series – Interoperability

Posted on August 13, 2024

At the time of this post, WA Health has been funded for the next three years to write the specifications and choose a vendor to develop an Electronic Medical Record, or EMR. This will be a statewide EMR for WA Health’s public hospitals and health services. From January to June 2024 HCC has been working with our EMR Consumer Reference Group to up-skill ourselves on all things digital, so we are able to provide the consumer voice into this part of the process. In March 2024 we convened a webinar entitled Can the EMR stitch up our health system? This blog has links to the replay, transcripts and summary and provides insights into what consumers need to think about. Consumer involvement in WA’s EMR is being funded by WA Health to ensure a strong consumer voice. WA has been leading the nation in the level of consumer involvement in this important initiative.

This blog series has been written by Pip Brennan who is working for HCC on the project, co-located in the Health Department.

Interoperability is just a fancy word for your health information following you, from GP to hospital, allied provider to pharmacist to specialist and back again. In 2021, HCC co-designed an Electronic Medical Record Consumer Charter which has this to say about interoperability:

  • Accuracy: My health records are complete, accurate and up to date.
  • Equitable care: My health records are available to my treating clinicians regardless of where I am being treated.
  • Transparency, Choice and Control:  I have access to my real-time health information at no cost to me or my family.

I’m just pausing for a moment to remind people of the difference between an Electronic Medical Record and My Health Record. The dot points from the Charter above refer to WA’s future Electronic Medical Record. The Electronic Medical Record and My Health Record are different as per the image below. An Electronic Medical Record is based within a hospital or health service. My Health Record contains federally based information such as GP care and immunisation records. We want the two to talk to each other. That is interoperability.

Image highlighting the difference between My Health Record (federal, GP and scripts etc) and Electronic Medical Record (state-based, everything that happens within the hospital walls

Australia is doing a significant amount of work on interoperability at a national level. We now have a National Healthcare Interoperability Plan, and this potentially offers WA an opportunity to have a more joined-up EMR than other states and territories who developed their EMRs prior to this policy coming into being.

There’s a change in the air that as if to say everyone recognises that we have an opportunity, probably a once in not just a single generation, but multi generation opportunity to fundamentally transform the way our health system works

Harry Iles Mann

Webinar – Can an EMR stitch up our health system?

Because of all the work happening nationally, we invited National Consumer Leader and Digital Health Expert Harry Iles Mann to talk with WA’s Chief Clinical Information Officer Dr Peter Sprivulis about WA’s Electronic Medical Record and how that could connect up our health care.

You can read the whole transcript, or highlights here, or watch the whole replay here.

Key messages about interoperability:

  • It’s all about culture. The technology is the easy bit. It’s the culture that is the difficult aspect to digital health transformation.
  • Get workflows right. Ensure that the words mean the same on each side of the transaction – that GPs and hospital staff mean the same thing. e.g. allergies.
  • Legal and regulatory levels. There is potential for the My Health Record Act to be broadened to become My Health Information Act. This will provide a safety for health consumers, and puts very clear obligations on health services to share data appropriately. This is a long term reform.
  • Financial and cultural piece – we need to deal with perverse incentives to make the right thing the easy thing for clinicians. For example, currently if a GP speaks to a specialist about a patient, neither is compensated, even though this could expedite care for a patient and avoid unnecessary, inconvenient, costly consultations. There needs to be a joined-up conversation with private, public, state and federal health to sort this out.
  • My Health Record is still key – There is ongoing investment in the My Health Record as a platform to facilitate interoperability and consumer access to their information. Yes, My Health Record has its issues – but a key reason for the ongoing investment is that regardless of what states and territories or different vendors do in developing EMRs, there will be something that is sitting within the custodianship of government that is a point of access for you and your health information.
  • We’ve made a start – WA has digitised parts of the Electronic Medical Records in WA’s hospitals, but this will see us take a bit leap forward. An EMR is all about the bedside workflows – this is where all the risk sits.
  • Patient portals can really assist with ensuring you have access to your EMR health information and can participate more actively in your own care.
  • The OpenNotes approach might be possible through WA’s EMR Project. (Google it. It’s very exciting!) This is quite aspirational though and may not be on the table, depending which vendor is chosen. OpenNotes will help clinicians think carefully about what they write about people, and will support the accuracy of information.

Importance of EMR Consumer Involvement

There are three levels of consumer input into training clinicians, and driving culture change:

1. Telling stories about what’s working, and what isn’t – this is effective with policy makers. Consumer stories are much more effective than clinicians providing feedback about what isn’t working for them as clinicians. Consumer stories can drive digital investment.

2. Co-designing solutions – so that the workflows centre around the patient, not the clinician. Information isn’t captured and shared for free. It always takes time and resources to share data.

3. Change management initiatives need consumers present, to make sure the tools are used in the way that helps consumers. Harry’s example of the test results not being available in the ED – it’s likely there is a portal that would allow the clinician access, but they don’t know how to use it. Consumers need to provide motivation for busy clinical staff to learn how to use the packages effectively.

Being a Digital Health Consumer/ Carer Rep:

  • You know more about digital health than you think you know.
  • You don’t need to understand every last technical detail – it’s important to ask naïve questions. This can prompt important critical thinking in digital health project.
  • There are no stupid questions – sharing your experience is more valuable than learning “geek language”  “Insist on answers in plain English. If the geeks can’t explain to you what they’re trying to do in plain English, then then you’ve probably got a program that’s not really set up for success anyway.”
  • We need to think of ourselves as allies with clinicians for change, working collaboratively together. “we’re not two different actors, trying to find common ground from across the chasm, we’re actually allies working towards a common goal.”

Feeling the need to geek out? All the federal initiatives for you to google are listed below:

There’s a change in the air that as if to say everyone recognises that we have an opportunity, probably a once in not just a single generation, but multi generation opportunity to fundamentally transform the way our health system works

Harry Iles Mann

Want to stay in touch with the project? Just fill in The EMR Consumer Network form or email p.brennan@hconc.org.au

Digital Health Series – Patient Portals

Posted on June 14, 2024

By Pip Brennan, Electronic Medical Record Consumer Reference Group Convenor

The Health Consumers’ Council was funded by the WA Health Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Program to convene three consumer webinars and four Consumer Reference Group meetings between January and June 2024. The purpose of this work is to build on the EMR Consumer Charter that was co-designed developed in 2021.

In this interim period prior to developing a tender for a statewide EMR, HCC aims to upskill a group of supported, networked consumers and empower us to deliberate on key aspects of the EMR. We have also created several videos on key topics. We are sharing the learnings from this work as widely as we can, as WA continues its progress towards obtaining EMR in around three years’ time.

Patient Portals – what do consumers need to know?

The Patient Portal is the part of an Electronic Medical Record that we can see and interact with.

It was the focus of the EMR Consumer Reference Group meeting in February 2024. Prior to the meeting, a list of patient portal resources were provided for the Group to look at:

At the meeting, we interviewed Liz Cashill and Consumer Representative Mary Oti from Royal Melbourne Hospital. They began implementing their patient portal in their EMR in 2020 and share key insights about what a patient portal is, how it works in practice, and what we need to think about as consumer representatives. You can watch the video replay below or read the transcript here.

WA’s Consumer priorities for a Patient Portal

After the presentation, the EMR Consumer Reference Group discussed our priorities for the future WA Health EMR Patient Portal. This is a summary which was provided to the WA Health EMR Program:

Consumer involvement: Consumers are partners throughout all stages of scoping, procurement, development and rollout of a patient portal.

Consumer centred: Base the design around us as consumers, as we move all across the system and want to be able to use one entry point for all our care. It must integrate and connect with adjunct and related systems; it needs to work in harmony with My Health Record. A priority for consumer centred care includes recording of preferred pronouns, name etc as part of the patient portal.

Consumer empowerment: The portal must support partnering with our health care team to achieve the best possible health outcomes. Specifically this includes two-way communication with an ability to view,  edit, download and print information about us. We need to be linked to knowledge and resources to navigate our care journey, with easy and intuitive navigation features.

Transparency, Choice and Control: this would look like there being controls for sharing of information need to be in place as they are for My Health Record, and understanding

Equity of access: we need to be supported to use the patient portal if we wish, but to receive the same standard of care if we don’t choose to use it. We would also like to see system flags to support equitable care,. e.g. when someone is travelling from the country. Other examples include a flag if there is a Disability Care Plan so staff are supported to provide safe care to someone who for example isn’t verbal. Flags to support trauma informed care are also key. A key consideration too is a patient portal available in languages other than English.

Proxy access is important with protections and permissions. For example, accessing health care for an adult child with a disability in the absence of guardianship –e.g. NDIS offer “common sense” choices – where people don’t need to get Guardianship to access their adult child’s records. We can sometimes have a bias towards the presumption of abuse e.g. in carers for people with disability, people who are frail aged.

Check the Digital Health page for the full series of webinars and information sessions on the WA Electronic Medical Record.

Reflections on the Digital Health Festival 2024

Posted on June 13, 2024

By Pip Brennan, Electronic Medical Record Consumer Reference Group Convenor

I was lucky enough to attend the Digital Health Festival 2024 in Melbourne, with WA consumer and health professional colleagues. The Health Consumers’ Council in WA negotiated to obtain three free consumer passes, and WA Health’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Program Team funded travel for myself and HCC Engagement Coordinator Kieran Bindahneem. We met Ricki Spencer in Melbourne, they are a member of the EMR Consumer Reference Group and split their time between WA and Victoria.

With eight concurrent streams and mostly 30-45 minute presentations, the Digital Health Festival was definitely overwhelming. Some of the concurrent presentations offered headphones, and these were by far the easiest presentations to stay focused in.

At the entrance was the stand where I took the opportunity to include a message about the importance of consumer involvement. #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs. It was not a common idea, and presentations mentioning co-design usually meant different health and government professionals collaborating. The wrap up report for the Digital Health Festival doesn’t mention the word “consumer” or “patient” anywhere – we sit somewhere in the “Other” category in the pie charts and tables. I have been approached to speak at the Digital Health Festival in 2025.

What has stayed with me

  • Dr Wonchul Cha’s keynote presentation about the Samsung Medical Centre in Korea, especially how the Patient Reported Outcomes surveys, which are integrated into their electronic medical record, achieve an 80%-90% response rate. They are a seamless part of the clinical appointment, and keep patient wellbeing right on top of the agenda.
  • Meeting up with consumer advocates including Mehmet Kavlakoglou, Harry Iles-Mann, and Ricky Spencer. Some quiet times talking outside the hub-bub of the Festival were restorative and insightful.
  • Talking to Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) staff and filling in a missing piece of the PROMS puzzle in my mind – how they need to be integrated into an EMR and used as part of care to get the return rate that really tracks patient outcomes (see Samsung example above).
  • Listening to a CSIRO presentation on the work they’re doing regarding consent processes and how to have ongoing consent facilitated when our data is used for research – consumers aren’t actively involved yet, but hoping they will be soon.
  • Panel discussion on how AI is supporting clinical decision making where one speaker suggested that over time, clinical trials may not be approved unless they have already gone through AI as this will reduce potential harm to patients.
  • I don’t need to feel total despair that each state and territory is doing its own thing regarding electronic medical records. Interoperability is still going to be technically possible. It is the number one consumer priority! The key challenges we have in relation to digital health are actually cultural – but the interoperability work at the federal level mandating interoperability is helpful.

 

Some reflections

  • What would it be like to have a consumer-co-led digital health festival with a focus on research translation, rather than research commercialisation? Some presentations were very sales-y.
  • Most states and territories have implemented their EMRs without significant or meaningful consultation with consumers, and even in some cases clinicians. Not so in WA! And after the conference the WA Budget announcement confirmed that WA will be funded for the next three years to develop a tender and appoint a supplier for WA’s EMR.
  • We have an EMR Consumer Charter in WA and a Consumer Reference Group working with the WA Health Team. We are upskilling ourselves and reflecting on what are key consumer priorities for an EMR. See our web page for all updates.

Opinion: It’s time for full transparency on who’s making money out of our healthcare

Posted on May 11, 2024

By Clare Mullen, Executive Director

So, there’s a few spats going on on social media at the moment in relation to health finance. Like on this post on LinkedIn where people representing surgeons, and people representing private health insurers, seem to me to be arguing about which one of them is going to charge the patient for the cost of surgical items.

So – it’s Saturday morning, and I have a bit of time, so I thought I’d try to see what some of these interests might be.

First up – the average salary of a surgeon

I couldn’t find any publicly funded sources of information from my quick search. But this article from Medrecruit (a medical recruitment firm) say they’ve used Australian Tax Office data to come up with an average taxable salary of $394,000 a year. The same company writes that neurosurgeons – like those who do spine surgery – can earn up to $800,000 a year.

So, between the 2023 article from Medrecruit, and a 2023 article from GlassDoor I feel comfortable reaching the conclusion that:

  • the average salary of a surgeon in Australia is around $340,000/year

Then to health insurer profits

The five biggest health insurance companies in Australia, according to the national consumer group Choice Australia are:

  • Medibank
  • Bupa
  • HCF
  • NIB
  • HBF

So I looked at the most recent annual reports (for 2023) for all of these companies. Some headlines:

  • Four of these five companies reported multi-million dollar profits last year – the exception is HBF who reported a loss of $87.7m, down from a loss last year too.
  • The average annual profit reported across the four was $344m/year.
  • Collectively, they reported profits of $1.3b.
  • Two of these five are set up as not-for-profit organisations – HCF (profit of $171.4m) and HBF

And so to the salaries of senior staff in health insurance firms…

I looked at what private health insurers pay their senior staff. (As a passing observation, if I didn’t know better I’d say that these firms don’t want you to work out what their senior staff get paid, because many of the reports make this information as opaque as possible. But I do know better. Except for HCF – they *really* don’t want you to know so they don’t publish it.)

Taking out HCF (because they don’t make that information available online), the average pay for the Chief Executive of the three other health insurance firms that reported a profit (or surplus) is $1.6m a year. Graph showing the comparison between the pays of health insurance CEOs, surgeons, and average earnings in Australia

As a comparison, the average for adult full-time earnings in Australia is $101,000/year. When you do a comparison that includes all earners (i.e. including those working part-time), the average annual salary is $74,500.

(And the CEO at HBF is reported as having been paid $731k to June 2023.)

So what?

So what does this mean? Is this just me whingeing about people who work hard to earn their money?

Nope. This is me trying to reconcile the reality of healthcare in this country. Where your socio-economic status determines your health, but where we’re seeing more outrage about which bit of the health system that’s making lots of money for the companies and people involved in providing that healthcare is going to pass on the cost of that healthcare to the people needing the healthcare.

It’s time for full transparency in health finances

As an informed health consumer, I find it really frustrating how challenging it is to find out about the financial interests in health. I want to know if the person or company providing me with care is doing it for my benefit, or for theirs.

This website from the Federal Government is a good start to find out about likely out of pocket costs for treatment you might be considering – https://medicalcostsfinder.health.gov.au/

And as someone who speaks regularly to people who are battling to get access to the healthcare they need – either having to overcome financial challenges, or grapple with bureaucratic processes that seem to have been designed by people who don’t give a fig about the people trying to access healthcare (which I know isn’t true!) – I want to see a much stronger voice for consumers and the community on this issue.

So let’s have full transparency on health finances. A few ideas off the top of my head on this Saturday morning:

  • If any healthcare provider receives any public funding (like Medicare), let’s require them to publish information about profits, and any individual salaries over the average annual salary
  • If any provider negotiates financial deals – like commission to preferred providers, or incentives for particular types of treatment – let’s require this to be published, and the information be made available to the consumer when they’re making a decision about treatment options
  • Along with the Choosing Wisely questions, let’s add a question about “What are the financial implications for you – the provider – in any of the options we’re discussing?”

 

 

Digital Health and the Electronic Medical Record – February 2024 Update

Posted on February 11, 2024

WA has been talking about getting an Electronic Medical Record for decades but to date, this has not exactly eventuated.

The first iteration of a digital record in our state came about when the Fiona Stanley Hospital was built in 2013. A newer version of this digital medical record has been in the process of being rolled out across our vast state since 2022. This has been done in preparation for a full Electronic Medical Record.

A project of this scale will require significant investment. During 2022-2023, a Business Case was developed and has now been submitted to treasury for consideration.

In 2021, HCC worked on a Consumer Charter for an Electronic Medical Record. If our state is successful in obtaining funding for the full Electronic Medical Record, there will still be a 10-year process to get a finalised version working in all our public hospitals. That means consumers will still be able to influence the design to ensure it meets our needs, as well as clinician and health system needs.

What do consumers think?

Consumer Involvement

HCC has been funded by WA Health to establish a Consumer Reference Group to help shape the project.

We will run three webinars between now and June 2024, and our Consumer Reference Group will meet four times within that period as well. We aim to build on the work of the Consumer Charter to provide considered feedback about our concerns and hopes for the key elements of an Electronic Medical Record.

We invite you to join us for the webinars; more details will be available soon and we will post the recordings online for those who can’t make it.

Connecting Across our Whole Health System

“Interoperability” – our information able to be accessed by ALL our care team.

An Electronic Medical Record is all your health information from within public hospital walls. Consumers have said they are interested in their private hospital specialists and GPs also being able to access important health information. Linking up residential and home-based aged care services has also been mentioned regularly. This is not the current focus of this program. Our role as consumer advocates is to link in with what is happening at a federal level with My Health Record. Ideally, we can help ensure the consumer ambition to have more integrated care is supported through digital innovations such as a patient portal that links up all our records.

Patient Portals

These are the public-facing part of an Electronic Medical Record – the part we will interact with. This is an area that we need to be able to influence the design of – seeing and changing appointments, being able to message the care team, etc. Continuing to link in with the federal developments of My Health Record will be a key consumer advocacy point.

Data Use, Privacy and Confidentiality

Connecting data across systems is currently very difficult. This makes it difficult for us to know if  health interventions are having the health outcomes we seek. An electronic medical record will generate data that could help us better understand the health outcomes being created through our health system. Meanwhile, My Health Record offers us the opportunity to lock down parts of our record, and know who has accessed our record, and we need to understand what might be possible in an Electronic Medical Record.

Patient Reported Outcome Measures and Patient Reported Experience Measures

Known as PROMS and PREMS and aiming to measure the patients’ views of their experiences and health, these measures are being developed in a piecemeal fashion in different areas of health and different parts of Australia (and the world). They will be part of the Electronic Medical Record and we need to be part of the conversation about what measures are used or developed.

Care Pathways – Sandwich or Biscuit?

Care pathways are informed by a number of factors, including evidence from clinical practice, research, and service improvement projects. These are a description of the best evidence informed care that consumers can expect. They are not meant to de-personalise care, rather care pathways are “guard rails” to support safe and high-quality care. These too will be encoded into the My Health Record and will require a coming together across WA’s public health system to agree on these. For example, if you are receiving diabetic care and experience low blood sugar in one part of the health system, you may be offered a sandwich. If you are in another part of the health system you may be offered a biscuit. How these are harmonised and developed across the state requires consumer input.

 

Pip Brennan, Consumer Consultant, February 2024

 

Health Service Consulting

Posted on November 2, 2023

Health Consumers’ Council is an independent charity that also operates as a non-profit social enterprise. Delivering paid projects is one of the ways that we fund our work with consumers, community members, and people with lived experience. Engaging HCC to work with your organisation will also help us to achieve our shared goal of person-centred equitable high-quality care for all.

Our consulting services support consumer-focused organisations with the design and development of innovative, contemporary approaches to consumer and community partnerships and involvement. With a people-first approach and a consumer/lived experience lens at the heart of everything we do, our work helps health organisations and staff feel more confident to work with consumers in a meaningful way.

We invite you to discuss your project and any associated fees with our team. We work hard to keep our overheads low so we can offer you value for money. When you work with HCC, you have the added value of knowing any revenue we generate is used to benefit the WA community.

Download our Capability Statement for more details.

Supporting health services to involve consumers and community

Health consumers play a vital role in ensuring improvements in healthcare delivery and a more person-centred healthcare system. We believe you cannot have effective, efficient, and safe health services without input from consumers.

In addition to providing support, education, and facilitation for health consumers, carers and community members, we offer a range of services for healthcare providers and the health system. Some of these attract a fee, which we encourage you to discuss with us.

With a deep understanding of the issues that impact diverse consumers, a wealth of collective knowledge, data and experience around working with the health system, and the ability to provide unique and nuanced insights, we offer immeasurable value to those wanting to deliver health services based on consumer needs.

We believe in the importance of authentic, productive partnerships in healthcare to create the WA health service we all aspire to.

Our full capability statement will be available soon.

When you work with HCC, you will have access to:

  • A partner who will work with you to shape and guide your project so that you get the right level of engagement to deliver on the promises made to all stakeholders
  • An equitable and collaborative approach that is sensitive to the needs of both consumers and health services staff
  • A team of qualified, multi-skilled experts with considerable lived experience, who are committed to championing the consumer voice
  • Experienced facilitators with diverse backgrounds, skilled at engaging with consumers with diverse backgrounds and requirements, in a meaningful way
  • An extensive network of connections and ongoing, trusted relationships with health consumers and communities
  • Support to connect and engage with informed and experienced consumer representatives

When should you contact us?

Before you scope your project: we can advise on timeframes and resources needed to meaningfully engage with consumers, carers and community members.

Once the scope is confirmed: we can advise you on ways you can reach and engage with your target groups.

During your engagement activities: we can help you to think through how best to get input from your target audience, be a sounding board for your plans, and be a place to debrief so you can embed the learning you’ve had from the work.

We offer a range of training and workshops for health services staff to improve their understanding of consumer perspectives and effective consumer engagement, as well as workshops you can offer to your consumer representatives.

All of our training is available on a bespoke basis, nearly all can be delivered in-person or online. HCC can also develop training and education packages to support your organisations’ specific needs.

For healthcare staff and organisations

For more detail and to make an inquiry about our training, see Our Training.

Seeing Beyond your Cultural Lens: The first part of developing a Cultural competency is to understand our own culture and how that influences how we see and experience the world. An opportunity for self-reflection and learning in an environment that is safe and supportive and gives participants the chance to challenge themselves.

Supporting Cultural Diversity in Healthcare: supporting health workers to provide culturally inclusive services that support patient-centered care.

Acknowledging Country workshop: learn to deliver a personalised Acknowledgment of Country with confidence and respect.

Introduction to partnering and engaging with consumers: an introduction to some of the things to consider when thinking about working with consumers and carers in health.

For consumer advisory groups

Introduction to consumer representation: support the development of a new consumer group, or upskill and support an existing consumer group.

Making the step from theory to practice in consumer engagement can be difficult. We’re committed to supporting people working in health and social care to involve consumers, carers, community members, clients and service users meaningfully in planning, developing, implementing and reviewing policies and services.

Our team is available to talk to you about your current projects or concerns and provide advice and suggestions about how to best engage with consumers.

Consulting and advisory services: providing advice and support on a range of issues related to consumer engagement, health policy, and health system reform.

Consumer partnership mentoring/coaching: helping you develop skills, awareness and strategies for engaging with health consumers.

Consumer engagement project planning: helping you effectively and meaningfully involve consumers in planning, developing, implementing and reviewing policies and services.

Consumer engagement: expert advice, support, recruitment, and facilitation to ensure the consumer voice is heard.

Facilitation: online, in-person or hybrid facilitations of consumer, carer and community engagement activities.

Supporting communications projects: ensuring information is accessible, easy to understand, and delivered to those who are harder to reach.

 

If you are looking for consumers and community members to join your committee or advisory group, or to provide other input on your project, we can help.

Whether you’re looking for guidance on how to get started with consumer recruitment, or you’d prefer someone to manage the recruitment process for you, we are available to help.

We encourage you to have a chat with us about how we can connect you with a diverse audience of engaged consumers and lived experience experts from different demographics and backgrounds.

Make sure you have a read of these key considerations for involving and partnering with consumers.

 

“Thank you so much for your help in arranging today’s regional focus on [this topic]. The participants were well informed, adequately prepared and provided invaluable insights throughout the course of the session… This first focus group has set a strong foundation (and very high bar!) for subsequent sessions in this project. This is testament to HCC’s strengths and your hard work in making this happen in such a short period of time.” – Client

 

“The HCC demonstrated exceptional skills to connect and develop meaningful relationships with multicultural communities in this project. The HCC ensured all community members were empowered and had a voice to improve the cancer care journey and successfully recruited culturally and linguistically diverse men and culturally and linguistically diverse people living in regional WA to participate in the project. Their leadership and contribution have informed the Department of Health on ways to improve the cancer journey for culturally and linguistically diverse consumers and carers.” – Health Networks (Cancer Network)

 

“I think this has been a very positive process. The opportunities we’ve had to put forward perspectives, it’s not just giving feedback. I feel we’ve had a role in shaping this, as well as feedback to some communications. I feel we’ve had our voices heard; the engagement has been really respectful…” – Consumer

 

“Very well facilitated to allow for people to ask and share and learn in comfort.” – Consumer

 

“Content excellent, break out groups very useful. Ability to participate via Zoom much appreciated!” – Consumer

The Voice to Parliament – a health consumer lens

Posted on October 6, 2023

Australians are being asked to go to the polls on October 14th and vote on whether the Constitution should be amended to recognise a First Nations Voice to Parliament.

Health Consumers’ Council hosted a lunchtime discussion on 6 October for people in representative roles as health consumers, carers, people with lived experience or community members to meet and learn about The Voice, and discuss the implications for healthcare and health outcomes.

In this presentation, we review some factual information about The Voice developed by Reconciliation WA and look at some of the expected health impacts for Aboriginal people of The Voice.

 

Digital Health

Posted on July 24, 2023

What do we mean by digital health?

Digital health is a broad term that includes:
• Health records being digital rather than paper-based
• Administrative tasks that happen online, such as booking, cancelling or rescheduling appointments
• Health care delivered digitally, for example via video or telehealth
• Systems that support information sharing, safety and coordination across health services

What is an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)?

An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is a secure digital system used by clinicians to record and access health information such as medications, allergies, test results, imaging, and clinical notes. In WA, the EMR will initially focus on public hospitals.

How is that different from My Health Record?

While they might sound similar, your My Health Record encompasses all aspects of your health care, from GP to hospital. An Electronic Medical Record usually refers to your health information within the walls of a hospital, or group of hospitals. It contains information relevant to your hospital admission, but doesn’t necessarily encompass your whole health history. My Health Record was put in place Australia-wide in 2019, with a record created for every Australia unless they opted out. You can find out more here.

The WA Health EMR Program

WA Health is introducing a new Electronic Medical Record (EMR) across public hospitals and health services in Western Australia. This is the largest clinical and digital transformation WA Health has ever undertaken, and a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve and coordinate how care is delivered across the state. This is the biggest safety and quality improvement show in town!

How have consumers been involved?

  • In 2021 HCC co-designed an EMR Consumer Charter inspired by the Queensland Digital Health Charter. With a reference group and community discussions, the following charter was created.
  • When the EMR Program was funded in 2023, HCC established an EMR Consumer Reference Group, inviting all the Charter reference group members back and adding new members. The Chair of the group is Pip Brennan, who has been co-located with the EMR Program one day per week.
  • The EMR Consumer Charter has been tested in discussions with consumer and carer advocates, Aboriginal people, Culturally and Linguistically community members, people living with disability and those that care for them and more.
  • A range of community conversations and events discussing the EMR and privacy and data use, interoperability, patient portals, patient reported outcome measures, and implementation of an EMR were undertaken over 2024-2025.  Recordings are available to watch on catch up here
  • From October 2025, WA Health employed a full-time Director Consumer Engagement, Rebecca Johnson, who has joined Pip Brennan and the EMR Consumer Reference Group for this next stage of development.
  • An Expression of Interest to recruit consumers and carers to take part in future consumer engagement activities took place over January to March and a pool of interested consumers has been formed.

 

[Last updated 04/26]