Abstract
Background: Healthcare costs within Australia continue to rise without commensurate improvement in health outcomes of care delivered. Across Australia there is a commitment to reform the healthcare system focusing on value-based care for patients. Within Victoria Australia, Northern Health have sought to enhance communication with patients and their families, particularly around shared decision making, quality of life and symptoms, and the impact of the patient care and treatment. This paper describes the co-design methodology utilised to: 1) Develop and implement new digital models of care, 2) capture, utilise and analysis patient reported outcome measures, and 3) evaluate the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of the transformed models of care across the health service.
Methods: A six-phase co-design methodology incorporating the Kotters change model will be piloted to develop, refine, implement and evaluate innovative multi-lingual, fully automated digital care pathways across ten clinical services. Quantitative and qualitative data will be collected from consumers and clinicians during the development and implementation of the digital care pathway to 1) understand the barriers and enablers of clinical care across specific clinical departments, 2) provide information to inform decision making, 3) understand patient outcomes and inform treatment, and 4) to evaluate each implemented digital care pathway.
Discussion: Northern Health is leading the change in Australia to implement evaluate and redesign models of care based on evidence to maximise the impact on health outcomes for patients and the community. This innovative initiative will change the way in which healthcare is delivered. At the time of publication this methodological approach has been applied with one digital care pathway implementation and 9 are currently under development.