Mapping Health Care Stakeholders

In this video presentation, Steve will discuss the concept of ‘mapping the stakeholders’. Organisations do not exist in isolation. And this is increasingly the case when it comes to data. Earlier this week we identified the role of data subjects in giving permission for data use (consent) and the opportunity to share data with partners or as open data. To fully exploit the value of data we need to engage with different stakeholder groups in both the sharing of data and the discussion on outcomes. It should be considered an ongoing relationship, dialogue, or conversation. Let’s look at how we would start this process. First, it is necessary to map your stakeholders, and often this is done by understanding their role but also their level of influence. Let’s look at this simple model which has been devised by the Professional Academy. If we take each in turn it is important to engage readily:

• The internal stakeholder group, like it or not, is likely the greatest influence on the data use and future collection. Employees are the ones that work with the data whilst managers are the ones most likely to decide if the data is valuable and if we should continue to collect it. Consider again our North Lanarkshire example, Our internal stakeholders include managers of the IT Systems and managers of the Non-Domestic Rates systems and processes. They are interested in the idea of being more efficient and will trade that off against cost. They also have great domain knowledge so will be involved in processes and add value and direction.
• Connected stakeholders could be many groups or individuals not in your organisation but directly related to the use of the data. Connected stakeholders, also called primary stakeholders, are those that have an economic or contractual relationship with the organisation, in health and social care terms the user or patient can be termed a connected stakeholder. In this image, even the citizen collecting the data could be considered a connected stakeholder.

Image source: marsdd.com

• External stakeholders, finally we have external stakeholders we should seek to engage with. In a pure health care setting, we may identify the following groups as external stakeholders
• Local Authority/council
• Providers
• Acute trusts
• Patients
• Service users
• Customers
• Suppliers
• Funders
• Quality assessors
• LINk group
• Special interest groups
• Health visitors/school nurses
• Wider public health workforce
• Media
• The Irish Government’s Open Data Strategy identifies 9 distinct groups as external stakeholders.

And in health care, the citizen, when not acting as a patient, can be deemed an external stakeholder as different things matter to them. The example above illustrates the external stakeholder groups but we need to consider then how we would engage with these groups. First, you may wish to map their level of influence to consider helping how you would engage. Then you need to understand how to engage, planning is referred to as a stakeholder engagement plan or strategy. A stakeholder engagement strategy should establish the objectives of stakeholder engagement through the plan preparation process and indicate how the involvement of stakeholders is achieved at each stage of the plan preparation/dissemination process.

Image source: stakeholdermap.com