What are roundtables and how are they used in healthcare?
One of the collaborative initiatives I lead has been organising a series of policy roundtables lately.
But what is a policy roundtable? How does it help address health issues? Should healthcare stakeholders consider organising and/or participating in one?
Roundtables are unique opportunities to engage the key people working in a given disease area or health issue, and most importantly the decision-makers. Below I listed a few topics for such events:
Addressing disparities in healthcare access among different populations.
Improve diagnostics/medicines coverage for underserved groups.
Strategies to reduce healthcare costs for governments/hospitals/patients.
Improve education and awareness of specific diseases among stakeholders.
These are just examples, but you can add your priority health issue to this list.
They are usually private events that focus on very specific topics from different perspectives. One of them is policy, which of course is important because the policy implemented in a given country dictates the way healthcare is delivered to citizens. Policies shape the quality of care, accessibility and affordability of medicines, diagnostics and health services in general. If, for example, a country has an imperfect policy for the coverage of vaccines against an infectious disease, it can lead to significant public health risks: low vaccination rate, high exposure to outbreaks of preventable diseases, high costs for the healthcare system as more doctors and hospitals have to deal with the increased number of patients, decreased ability to work for patients with complications, etc. etc.
Policy roundtables aim to facilitate discussions to solve these imperfect situations. They are used to inform policymaking (i.e. make the policy better through robust data) by leveraging research findings, comparative analyses and/or expert findings (such as those from academics, patient advocacy groups, clinicians, etc.). By sharing experience and data, the stakeholders can highlight gaps in current policy and discuss the way to an improved one.
Now let’s move to the how. How can a successful roundtable be organised?
The first step is to define the purpose. Why do we want to organise a roundtable? What are the objectives? What is the expected/desired outcome?
Then we map the stakeholders. Who should be invited? Why is his/her presence relevant? What stakeholder category does he/she represent? What topic is he/she most suitable to present?
We also define the roles and responsibilities of non-speaker participants. We need someone to moderate the discussions (usually a general healthcare expert or a topic/disease expert from a neutral organisation) and the support team, those who take care of the logistics.
In parallel, the roundtable documentation is defined. It should include the context and objectives of the event, the agenda, a description of the topics to be presented and the questions for the discussion among speakers/panellists, and the deck to be shared during the event. And the logistics details: venue, timings, and requirements from speakers (slides, preparation of the questions to be addressed). If the roundtable is hosted in person, we need to liaise with the physical venue (hotel, meeting room). If it’s virtual, we choose the platform (Zoom is the most popular) and make sure everyone is informed about the good practices for the online event.
Once the roundtable is completed, a summary is shared with the participants, which should ideally end with the next steps associated with the objectives set at the beginning of the process. Policy change doesn’t happen overnight, therefore it is critical to ensure that actions are identified and agreed upon by the participants during the roundtable, and that follow-up is ensured.
I hope you have a better understanding of what roundtables are and how they can be strategically used to make healthcare better.
#healthcare #healthpolicy #policydiscussions #collaboration
