Patient Voices Network - Frequently Asked Questions

The NBHC Patient Voices Network is a forum whereby New Brunswick citizens will be invited to share their experiences and voice their opinions on specific components of the health care system.

The purpose of this initiative is to foster dialogue with New Brunswick citizens about the quality of the health system in order to generate ideas and input about potential patient-centered improvements in health care. 

The New Brunswick Health Council is a provincial organization with a two-part mandate: engage citizens in ongoing dialogue about the improvement of health service quality in the province, and measure, monitor and publicly report on health service quality and population health. To learn more about the NBHC’s mandate, watch our video here: nbhc.ca/mandate. 

The Patient Voices Network will explore the theme of virtual access to primary care. More specifically, citizens and care providers in New Brunswick will be asked about their experiences using virtual care and their perceptions of whether, and in what circumstances, it met their needs. 

Virtual care is defined as any interaction between a health care provider and a patient, or between two health care providers, that occurs remotely through information and communication technologies.

Virtual visits are clinical interactions in which patients receive care electronically from a health care provider. They can happen over the telephone, through a videoconference, or via secure messaging.

The Patient Voices Network will explore how virtual visits impact citizen’s access to primary care services.

Residents of New Brunswick who are 18 years of age or older and who live in a private household are eligible to participate.

To make sure we get the chance to hear from everyone who participates, we have limited registration for our virtual engagement sessions to 75 participants.

We will also be conducting focus groups and interviews with citizens in various communities in New Brunswick to make sure we hear from diverse perspectives and have a more accurate portrait of the different experiences with virtual care.

The New Brunswick Health Council is committed to actively engaging citizens in health service quality improvement. If you do not get the chance to participate in the Patient Voices Network engagement activities, and would like to share your experiences with virtual care with the NBHC, please feel free to submit your insights anonymously by completing the form. We look forward in hearing from you.

Here are some examples of questions that we will be asking during the various activities conducted by the Patient Voices Network:

• Have you had a virtual visit with a primary care provider? Why or why not?
• How was your experience with virtual care?
• Were your needs met when you received primary care through a virtual visit?

The NBHC acknowledges that, when participating in an engagement activity, you may share some personal information about your experiences with the health care system. 

To protect your personal information, the NBHC will make the following commitments:

• We will only collect the personal information we need to get an accurate picture of citizens’ experiences with virtual visits
• We will not share or disclose registration lists from our engagement activities
• We will not share or disclose recordings from any of our engagement activities
• When completing the data analysis, we will remove all personal information from our notes and records of the engagement activities
• We will not attribute any quotes or comments to you in our final report or any public material we share

Nevertheless, it is important to note that other citizens will also be participating in these sessions. The NBHC will ask all participants not to share any personal information they hear during our engagement activities. However, we encourage all citizens to only share information they are comfortable with disclosing in any engagement activity they participate in. 

The information shared will help us better understand citizens experiences with virtual care. After we have completed our engagement activities, the NBHC will prepare a report to highlight what we heard. 

This report will be released publicly and will be used to inform citizens and health system stakeholders about New Brunswickers’ experiences with virtual visits, as well as shape our recommendations to the Minister of Health.

If you have any questions or would like to have more information about the Patient Voices Network or its results, please call our toll-free number 1-877-225-2521.