Taking forward women’s and their partners’ experiences: an investigation of experience-led commissioning for maternity care

BackgroundExperience-led commissioning is a commissioning process that provides a way of using patient experience as an integral part of clinical commissioning in the NHS. The aim of ELC is to put the experience of people, families and frontline teams at the centre of clinical commissioning by using ‘robust patient experience insights and co-design’(Georgina Craig, designer of ELC methodology, personal communication) in a systematic way. ELC is relevant to the current movement within the NHS towards a more user-centred service, for which any modernisation of the NHS involves putting patients ‘at the centre of everything the NHS does’, 208 by giving them more choice and control. A recent UK Government White Paper stated that this change will be achieved using the principle ‘no decisions about me without me’and that services will be designed around users, rather than expecting users to fit into services …