Co-creation as a Service Design Tool for Improving Hospital Services: The Example of Pärnu Hospital's Patient Advisory Council, Estonia

The most important mission of healthcare organizations is to create values for patients by achieving the best treatment outcomes and taking maximum account of the needs and specificities of the patients. The healthcare service provider should not be the only value creator, and service receivers could also co-create the service value with the service provider. The co-creation principle of service design states that to design or improve the experience of a service, it is important to involve all its actors. Co-creating with patients means engaging them actively in the design process. Patients can be involved in co-creation in a wide variety of ways, e.g. mapping patients’ journeys, providing feedback on the different stages of the care pathway, asking for information on the sufficiency and clarity of the information that is important to them, organizing workshops, roundtables, etc. The involvement of patients in co-creation processes is essential in order to better understand their expectations, experiences, behaviours, and feelings. One of the opportunities for co-creation in obtaining a patient view has become the patient advisory councils (PAC) established at hospitals. As of today, PACs have been established in five Estonian hospitals. Although the formation and work processes in the councils differ, the input of PACs to hospitals so far has been similar: proposals on the adequacy and availability of information to be shared with patients, the creation of patient support services (e.g. patient schools and discussion groups), improving hospitals’ physical environment, and participating in different projects with a patient view. The chapter gives an example of the experience of Pärnu Hospital’s Patient Advisory Council as a partner in the co-creation of hospital service design.