Mrs Rebecca Brough1, Mrs Linda Miln1
1Eastern Palliative Care, Mitcham, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Rebecca Brough is an RN with experience in clinical care, education, and patient feedback. Rebecca chairs the Consumer Advisory Committee at Eastern Palliative Care, where she’s been a consumer advisor since 2023. Her interest and advocacy is shaped by EPC’s care for her mother during end-of-life in 2014.
Linda Miln, MBA, RN, is Quality, Risk & Compliance Manager at Eastern Palliative Care. With over 20 years’ experience in public sector quality management, she brings expertise in clinical governance, risk, compliance and accreditation. Linda holds an MBA in Health Law and Risk Management and champions consumer partnerships in value-based palliative care.
Abstract:
Background:
Consumer voice in health service design is essential for delivering care that truly matters to people at end-of-life. Eastern Palliative Care (EPC) has formalised consumer partnership through its Consumer Advisory Committee (CAC), aligning with Value-Based Health Care (VBHC) principles to drive policy, system, and structural change including models of care. Utilising a simple, transparent ‘Consumer Contribution Tracker’ made “voices that matter” visible to decision makers that helped to embed structural change.
Aims:
1.To capture and demonstrate how lived experience, through the CAC, translates into measurable improvements in system design, policy development and care delivery at EPC
2.To showcase the impact of co-design within a VBHC framework.
Methods:
A retrospective analysis of EPC’s Consumer Contribution Tracker (Jan 2023–Oct 2025). All CAC-raised items were categorised and key projects mapped to EPC’s VBHC strategy. Completion rates and project categories identified, and exemplars of system change were highlighted.
Results:
92% completion of twenty-eight CAC-led projects were identified (2023: 7; 2024: 9; 2025: 11). Projects spanned codesign, publications, client information, and quality systems. Notable system changes included: health and death literacy tools, redesign of consent processes, client information, electronic pre-admission language, clinical handover processes, contribution to models of care projects and activation of patient-reported outcome and experience measures (PROMS/PREMS). CAC input is now further embedded in EPC’s governance and strategic planning, amplifying the consumer voice to shape care.
Conclusions:
Consumer voice at EPC has delivered sustained policy, system, and structural change, anchored within EPC’s eight-component VBHC framework. Using a simple, transparent tracker made “voices that matter” visible to decision makers and helped embed structural change. The co-designed approach means care is aligned to outcomes that matter most to clients and carers, improves experience, and creates conditions for sustainable, high-value community palliative care.
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