In the day job we produce a regular update to help our organisation understand the work we do around engagement and communications. I’m going to be reproducing those updates (abridged) here as a way to record and reflect the scope of the work we do.
The year so far in Provider Engagement (1st January – 10th February)
An update on the work of the Provider Engagement Team over the last week (more like just over a month). We hope this update is interesting and informative and gives key insights into the work we do to engage and communicate with providers and professionals who work in health & social care.
Apologies for not keeping these updates as regular as we would have liked, the original plan was to have them weekly but for various reasons (mainly capacity) that hasn’t happened.
So this is a one off bumper update to bring us up to date and from then on we’ll hopefully get back to weekly.
Stakeholder engagement
One of the key roles of our team is supporting the management of relationships with the key bodies that represent providers (trade associations). Providing forums and opportunities for us to have meaningful conversations, to give them the opportunity to shape how we work and to give us the opportunity to influence their role in leading the sectors we regulate.
Sometimes these relationships can be challenging, either because the fundamental nature of the relationship between a regulator and the people we regulate is challenging or because there are events that put strain on our relationship.
It’s our aim to be able to have honest an open conversations with provider stakeholders, so that even in challenging circumstances we’re able to maintain relationships that are largely positive and constructive. We don’t always get this right but are always working to make this better.
Some notable stakeholder engagement over the last month has been:
- External Strategic Advisory Group – this is our most senior stakeholder forum. It brings together senior colleagues from our most influential provider/public stakeholders to engage with us on our strategy & transformation work.
- Our monthly forum for ASC trade associations.
- Our regular liaison meeting with RCGP/BMA and our online provider forum (online primary care).
As part of implementing a new provider engagement strategy we will be reviewing and refreshing our approach to stakeholder engagement, watch this space for more.
Bulletins & bulk email
Our monthly bulletins went out at the end of Jan. For those who don’t know, we have three main monthly provider email bulletins (one each for ASC, Hospitals and PMS) and roughly quarterly bulletins for the dental and mental health sector. These go to approx. 145,000 providers and professionals who work in health & social care. Keeping them up to date with the latest regulatory changes but also trying to influence how they deliver care to drive improvement.
To make the most of this activity it’s important we have the right bulk email service to use, one that allows us to target specific audiences, give them the right content to influence them and give us the right insights on whether they’re having an impact. To make sure we do we’re going through a procurement exercise for a new contract due to start in April.
We will update once a provider has been confirmed.
Podcasts
It’s important to us that we deliver the right content for our audiences. Content that they find engaging, interesting and they need. And most importantly content that has an impact.
Over the next year we’ll be trialing a variety of content types that our insight tells us health & social care professionals will be receptive to, and we’ve started with podcasts.
We know that listening rates for doctors in NHS Trusts, GPs, practice managers and nurses across all providers are around three times that average for the UK population and they seek out podcasts on health and social care issues.
We’ve now delivered the first series of podcasts (four episodes in total) that are available on Soundcloud and all major podcast providers.
So far our listener numbers compare well with similar providers, with a total of 7388 downloads/streams across all of our content/providers. And we’re conducting analysis to understand the impact they are having.
We’ll be taking this work forward with two episodes per month from March onward and will be looking to give us more professional recording equipment to give more flexibility around when and where to record.
Blogs
Another type of communication content that we know works well with provider audiences are blogs, especially when they come from an influential individual. Over the last month we’ve published the following:
- Monthly blog from Kate Terroni
- Monthly blog from Prof Ted Baker
- Monthly blog from Dr Rosie Benneyworth
- A first and second blog to celebrate young carers awareness day
- The first in a series of blogs looking at winter pressures
- A blog from Dr Malte Gerhold looking at our regulatory sandbox work
Coproduction
We work others to deliver a series of coproduction events throughout the year. These give us the opportunity to involve providers, the public, commissioners and other stakeholders in the development of policy, methodology and strategy.
At present we have sector specific groups for ASC, PMS and Hospitals and a cross sector group and are currently in the process of updating our terms of reference for each to strengthen the purpose and outputs of this work.This month the ASC and Hospitals group met, for information the agendas are here and here.
Samuel Wallace 