Engaging Stakeholders in Healthcare: Tips and Strategies

Understanding the role of stakeholders in healthcare is a fundamental element of successful healthcare initiatives. Whether conducting clinical research or building a new hospital in an underserved community, engaging stakeholders is essential.

Stakeholder engagement in healthcare is not just about gathering stakeholder input. It’s about fostering a collaborative environment where stakeholders feel valued and heard and treating all stakeholders with dignity and respect — from senior leadership at hospitals to the patients they serve.

Let’s look at the importance of stakeholders in healthcare, who the stakeholders are, and how to build relationships through stakeholder engagement.

What Is a Stakeholder in Healthcare?

Healthcare stakeholders include individuals, groups, and organisations that have an interest in healthcare outcomes. That may include research institutions, public health organisations, and even the entire population within a geographic area. Generally, however, the following four groups are considered the main stakeholders in healthcare:

Patients

Patients are the most valuable stakeholders in healthcare, as their investment is the highest. The security of their personal data and health outcomes depends on healthcare systems and providers.

Patient feedback is crucial for improving the standard of care, which makes them a powerful influence in healthcare and underscores why creating a positive patient experience is so important.

Providers

Providers include individuals — like surgeons and nurses — and health institutions like hospitals and Urgent Care Clinics.

Providers balance patient outcomes and risks, evaluate treatment options, and manage treatment costs. Providers also navigate how systems like Medicare impact patient care.

Payors

Payors include local hospital networks, private insurers, and Medicare. Their focus is cost containment while ensuring the quality and appropriateness of treatments.

Policymakers

Policymakers include state and federal government entities. They develop and oversee standards for care, and monitor patient outcomes to ensure providers are providing quality care.

The Importance of Stakeholders in Healthcare

Stakeholder involvement in healthcare drives successful outcomes in several ways:

Enhancing Decision Making

Involving stakeholders ensures diverse perspectives are included in decision-making processes. For example, imagine a government proposal to construct an Urgent Care Clinic in rural Queensland. This project would require input from area residents about the clinic’s location, as well as guidance from healthcare professionals on how to fill provider roles at the clinic.
Designing services and facilities that better serve the needs of all stakeholders also depends on inclusive decision-making. By engaging patients, providers, administrators, and community members, healthcare organizations can ensure facilities are both functional and accessible, while aligning with real-world needs.

Improving Risk Management and Cost Control

Engaging experienced stakeholders early in planning can help mitigate potential risks and reduce project costs. Unexpected risks and costs are often well-known among stakeholders who have learned through trial and error.
Stakeholders in leadership roles also play a critical part during crises such as a pandemic. Their insight and guidance not only help manage risks under pressure but also facilitate preventative healthcare measures that reduce long-term costs and support healthier communities.

Building Reputation and Trust in Healthcare

Meaningful engagement fosters trust and builds a positive reputation among communities and stakeholders. Trust is also critical for patient-provider relationships. People who don’t trust healthcare systems or providers are unlikely to seek treatment when they need it.
When stakeholders are involved in facilitating better overall outcomes for the community, such as through preventative healthcare initiatives, trust grows stronger. This reputation for proactive, patient-centered care positions healthcare systems as reliable, responsive, and committed to public well-being.

How to Identify Stakeholders in Healthcare

Stakeholder engagement in healthcare begins with identifying who your stakeholders are. Stakeholders will vary based on the scope of an initiative or engagement. For example, the construction of a major hospital could involve key stakeholders such as:

• Local, State and Federal/Central governments
• Community members
• Health related NGOs
• Medical specialists
• Associated healthcare providers
• Tenants in the facility
• Investors
• Health system leadership
• Suppliers
• Construction firms
• Municipal planners

The stakeholders associated with a patient’s routine, ongoing medical care generally are far fewer: the patient and providers, family members, and payors.

Once you have your lists of stakeholders, you can develop a plan for stakeholder engagement.

Creating a Strategy for Stakeholder Engagement

Here’s how to get started with your healthcare stakeholder engagement plan:

Assess Stakeholders

The stakeholder assessment process is similar to how marketers create customer personas — you’re looking at what matters to stakeholders, their expectations, and how they influence or experience outcomes. As you uncover these details, you can begin to segment your stakeholders by shared qualities and map out how stakeholders connect to each other.

Evaluate Sentiment

Stakeholder sentiment is how stakeholders feel about a project or issue. They may be enthusiastic, distrustful, or even ambivalent.

By tracking stakeholder sentiment over time, you can better understand your engagement strategies. For example, if a stakeholder group initially seems resistant to a project, and you launch an email campaign that helps them overcome objections, you might see a significant improvement in sentiment.

Create an Engagement Plan

With the information you’ve gathered, you can plan engagement strategies that speak to every stakeholder, through the most effective communication channels.

5 Pillars of Stakeholder Engagement in Healthcare

Keep these principles in mind when engaging with stakeholders in healthcare:

1. Put the Patient First

Prioritise the needs and experiences of patients and actively involve them in healthcare decisions. This approach is part of person-centred care, which is the foundation for healthcare standards and quality in Australia.

Person-centred healthcare emphasises the importance of treating patients as a whole, rather than just treating their symptoms or medical conditions. Treating patients with dignity and respect and seeking their input and feedback improves outcomes for patients and caregivers.

2. Encourage Multidisciplinary Collaboration

Collaboration across stakeholder groups enriches perspectives, improves decision-making, and ensures comprehensive care. Stakeholder groups can even include people with no formal affiliation to a healthcare system, such as community residents.

For example, Public Health Networks often play a coordinating role in cancer care across a region. To succeed, they must work with hospitals, clinics, specialists, and other organizations that each provide different elements of care. One of their biggest challenges is developing and maintaining a stakeholder register to track which groups provide which services, while also building relationships to understand how best to support them. In many cases, their role is to actively facilitate collaboration between these external parties to ensure care is integrated and patients receive the support they need.

3. Utilise Technology and Analytics

Use data and analytics tools to make real-time decisions and offer reporting for stakeholders. Technology facilitates collaboration across different geographies, improving the speed and accuracy of information sharing — but make sure your technology protects sensitive data and includes compliance management functionality.

4. Focus on Multi-directional Communication

A top-down approach won’t work for healthcare stakeholder communication. At every point in the stakeholder relationship, you should welcome and invite feedback. Free-flowing communication ensures positive collaboration, helps manage expectations, and gives stakeholders a greater sense of ownership in outcomes.

Consistently follow up on stakeholder enquiries to demonstrate that their opinions matter, and thank them for their contributions.

5. Evaluate and Refine

Successful stakeholder engagement involves continuous evaluation. That means reviewing your engagement efforts and making improvements as needed. This is another initiative that benefits from the involvement of stakeholders. Consider asking stakeholders how they felt about:

• Communication during projects
• The cadence of project updates
• Recognition of their feedback and opinions

Any information you collect from stakeholders can help you refine your engagement strategies.

Simply Stakeholders: Your Partner in Stakeholder Engagement

Improving stakeholder engagement in healthcare may seem like a daunting task, but with the right software, it’s not difficult. Simply Stakeholders includes all the features you need to identify, assess, and engage stakeholders, and track every stakeholder interaction.

When you’re ready to simplify stakeholder engagement, we’re here to help. Reach out — we’d love to hear from you!