Engaging the public in healthcare decision making: Should the Emergency Department Treat Everyone who Presents for Treatment? Citizens' Jury on Emergency Care Services

Citizens’ Juries (CJ) offer a way of seeking informed public views using a democratic, deliberative process. This report describes the methods, processes, and verdicts of a CJ held in Queensland in June 2012, focussing on public preferences around the provision of emergency care services. This CJ was undertaken as part of larger research study led by Griffith University and funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, along with partner investigators Queensland Health, Southern Adelaide Local Health Network Inc., the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, Flinders University, and Queensland University of Technology. The larger project aims to facilitate the identification and application of optimal methods for engaging the public in healthcare decision-making, provide guidance on the appropriate population groups to consider when eliciting preferences, and provide direct public input to guide health policy. The project is using two methods to engage the public and address a range of methodological questions: the deliberative CJ and the Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE). The DCE is a quantitative method that can elicit the relative strength of preference of the public around a priority-setting topic, and the trade-offs the public are prepared to make.

The electoral roll, obtained with approval from the Electoral Commission of Queensland, was used to develop a sampling frame of the Metro South Health Service District, 1 and a random sample was invited to express interest in being a juror. From those interested, a jury of 22 was purposively selected to reflect the demographic characteristics of Queensland.