What we have learnt about the value of patient partnerships

Partnering with patients in both their own care and treatment and in the design and delivery of services has multiple benefits. These apply to patients at an individual level, the services they use, and to the NHS. These benefits cover three key areas

• Quality and outcomes: Working in partnership with patients ensures that services meet patients’ needs, and, therefore, achieve better results for patients.
• Cost-effectiveness: Ensuring that services meet patients’ needs minimises money wasted on ineffective services, or on services needed to rectify problems arising from inadequate care and treatment
• Safety: A system that works with patients will value their input and be responsive to concerns about emerging safety problems. Failure to respond to such concerns is consistently a factor in NHS safety scandals, and a major contributor to the NHS’s clinical negligence bill.

Patient partnerships realise these benefits in any circumstances. In a well-resourced system, patient involvement enhances services and drives them towards excellence. In an under resourced system, it enables scarce resources to be used to maximum effect. Failing to involve patients in either of these scenarios has two inevitable consequences: poorer outcomes for patients and ineffective use of public resources.

The Patients Association strives to be a constructive partner to the health and care system in realising these benefits. To do this we have developed our thinking further to give partners in the health and care system a practical framework to view patient partnerships through. 

The six key principles of patient partnership

We have identified the six key principles of patient partnership. We have engaged extensively with patients in developing these principles, as well as a network of national and local organisations and health and care thought leaders. The principles we’ve identified are:

1. Treating patients as equals: Patients are treated as equals, with their views recognised as equally valid and having an equal say in decisions.
2. Patients who are fully informed: Services and systems make sure patients are fully informed, in a way that patients can access and understand, and patients use as much information as they wish to.
3. Shared decision making and patient partnership: Shared decision making, and patient partnership approaches are used as a matter of routine.
4. Recognising inequalities: Inequalities are recognised, and appropriate approaches adopted for different patient groups and communities, identifying and meeting their specific needs.
5. Seeking patient input: Patient input is actively sought, genuinely valued, and meaningfully acted on.
6. Joining services around patients: Services join up around patients, working with them to identify their needs, and responding to them in a way that make things as easy as possible for the patient.

Recognition of the value of patient partnership in the health and care system

The case for these principles and the value of patient partnership with the health and care system have already been successfully made. In the last decade or so we have seen huge strides in the recognition of the importance of patient partnership in numerous forms of guidance and strategies that have been issued to help shape the health and care system:

NHS Constitution (2012)

NHS England Five Year Forward Plan (2014)

Comprehensive Model for Personalised Care (2018)

Long Term Plan (2018)

Working in Partnership with People and Communities (2022) 

How organisations can implement these principles

We recognise that understanding how to implement these principles, and the national guidance that reflects, can be daunting in practice. Particularly for newly formed organisations taking on new responsibilities, building new relationships, and which may be in the early stages of the journey towards working more closely with patients.

At the same time, patient partnership should be embedded in the NHS structure. We aim to help organisations in putting them in place. With this in mind, the Patients Association has developed a number of measures that organisations can put in place now, as well as how they can be achieved, and their success measured.

We have set out these measures for each of the six principles of patient partnership that we have developed. Done well, many of the suggested activities can help ensure that organisations meet several of the principles of patient partnership at the same time.

Find out more about how we can help your organisation put patient partnership in place