Emergency Department Co-Design Stage 1 Evaluation - Report to Health Services Performance Improvement Branch, NSW Health

Abstract

This report presents our evaluation of Stage 1 of the NSW Health Emergency Department Co-design Project. This evaluation was conducted 12 months after Stage 1 of the Co-design project began and is intended to be complemented with a Stage 2 report in December 2009. The evaluation covered the following four sources of data: reports provided by Co-design sites, stakeholder interviews, legislative, policy and academic literatures, and national Emergency Department data. The survey of Co-design initiatives reveals that Co-design is an important evidence-based trend in government-citizen engagement (see Section 7 of this report). This trend is away from large-number surveys to genuine discussions about what matters to people. Experience-based codesign is a methodology that is part of this trend and is therefore a positive step forward for NSW Health. The analysis of participants' interviews reveals that Co-design in the three New South Wales sites led to significant improvements, changes in practice, and learnings for clinical and health departmental staff.