Co-designed principles for establishment of a virtual hospital

We aimed to inform design and implementation of a new Australian private virtual hospital by establishing co-designed principles to inform a ten-year vision. This qualitative pre-implementation co-design study used an implementation science approach informed by the PERCS framework. Three workshops were held, one face-to-face in Brisbane, Australia, and two online. In each workshop, results of a prior barriers/enablers/considerations study were presented and critiqued by participants, followed by activities in focus groups. Thirty-six stakeholders from metropolitan, regional and rural areas participated including consumers, carers, health and aged care leadership, nurses, allied health providers, general practitioners, researchers, and public health stakeholders. There was strong enthusiasm, with some reservations such as clinical safety concerns. Four strong themes emerged: (1) Take the care to the patient; (2) Virtual is the mechanism, the care is real; (3) Be ambitious, but build a strong foundation; (4) Build the right workforce. These themes were repeated across all workshops, indicating good reliability of results. The strongest overall messages were the need for authentically patient centred care and safety. Four principles were developed from the workshop data, with “safety first” underpinning all principles. Using an implementation science-informed, pre-implementation co-design approach led to stakeholder enthusiasm.