Customer story: Metro South Health, AU

Broad-scope health services

Metro South Health is the major provider of public health services, health education and research in the Brisbane south side, Logan, Redlands and Scenic Rim regions of Queensland, Australia. With an estimated population of one million people, they’re one of the most highly accessed health services in Australia. 

The area covered by Metro South Health is extensive and there are huge demographic differences in the people they look after.

This means that, in order to make sure that everyone is getting the health care that they need, good quality patient engagement is essential.

They use Citizen Space as a means to consult formally and ask for targeted feedback. But they also recognise that, in order to keep up with the health needs of a constantly evolving and diverse population, that they too need to be continually improving. That’s where Dialogue comes in.

By the people, for the people

Metro South use their Dialogue site as a hub for their Futures Lab project. It’s designed to crowdsource, test, and implement practical changes that will improve health services for all patients - very much a ‘by the people, for the people’ approach. The project has three stages: ideas generation, design/testing, and delivery. Dialogue is used in the first stage, and so far two ‘challenges’ - specific issues to which people can submit ideas, add comments and rate others’ ideas - have been run on the site as part of Futures Lab.

The challenges are branded as ‘ideas jams’, and they’re ways for members of the public, health professionals and stakeholders to contribute to improving health services. Each challenge had several prompt questions, which, after the challenge closed, were used as an easy way to sort the responses received in to categories.

Continuous improvement

The format of the project involves a ‘win scenario’: that is, all ideas are assessed by the project leads, with the aim of selecting the best ones to be developed and ultimately delivered. This means that participants are encouraged to provide thoughtful, detailed and informed submissions as there’s a chance they may be implemented in real life. All in all, each challenge received nearly 100 submissions from a wide range of people, including industry experts, patients and other members of the public speaking from personal experience. The result was a wealth of valuable stakeholder insight and patient engagement that Metro South Health can draw on to make their health services more accessible, efficient and effective for all their patients.