Patient/Public Engagement Measurement and Evaluation Project (PEMEP) within the British Columbia Ministry of Health’s Patients as Partners Initiative

In 2010, the Patients as Partners Initiative of the British Columbia (BC) Ministry of Health began work to improve the BC healthcare system by partnering with patients to empower patients and to develop and support the implementation of sustainable healthcare policies. This quality improvement initiative provides leadership, strategy, policy, collaboration, and funding to bring patient voice, choice, and representation to the forefront of the health sector. 

This initiative's spectrum of patient engagement activities is performed across many projects using the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) approach of inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower at the individual, community, and health system levels. A small but growing number of publications cover the principles, measurement, and evaluation of patient engagement in various aspects of the healthcare system.  But to date, no measures or quality indicators have been validated to assess the outcome and impact of patient engagement activities. Further research is vital to providing evidence-informed tools to quantitatively evaluate both the impact of integrating the patient/public perspective into planning, policy and services of BC's healthcare system and the impact that engagement is having on health outcomes. 

The overall aim of this project is to identify, validate, and implement quality indicators of patient engagement at the individual, community, and system level within the Patients as Partners Initiative by the BC Ministry of Health. This will be conducted in a three-phase study: 1) a scoping review will identify key quality indicators from the published and grey literature; 2) a Delphi study with a 20-member panel of key stakeholders will validate the identified indicators; and 3) a stakeholder consultation workshop will facilitate creation of a plan to pilot test and routinely collect the quality indicator to measure and evaluate the success of patient engagement.