• Through effectively mapping the patient journey with patients, changes can be made to improve the patient experience and make savings by improving efficiency and productivity.  If patient experiences are better understood, the number of emergency admissions should also be reduced. For example, it is estimated that up to 75% of hospital admissions for asthma are avoidable.
• Individuals who have been involved and consulted simultaneously improve their understanding of the decision processes that affect their treatment. This empowers patients to make more informed decisions about their own lives, and enables them to have a full discussion with clinicians, improving levels of concordance and giving patients with long-term conditions the confidence to self-manage.
• The improvements in public access to information that can flow from an effective engagement strategy will mean that demand can be more strongly and appropriately focused, which should drive up standards and lead to better and safer services.
• Involvement often leads directly to demonstrable improvements in patient outcomes.
• Local legitimacy for commissioning decisions will be enhanced. Genuine involvement should improve public confidence in services and will help to ensure that patients, service providers and commissioners all have the same expectations of the care that should be available.

This list of benefits was generated at a roundtable discussion in December 2006 which included representatives of Asthma UK, the British Heart Foundation, the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health, the Department of Health, Diabetes UK and the Picker Institute, along with some of the expert commissioners behind the guidance on this site.