Western Victoria Primary Health Network (WVPHN) has released the Service Redesign Co-design Report, conducted to help guide how WVPHN designs, funds and coordinates services for health care across western Victoria.
Over the course of 2021, WVPHN met with health service professionals, people with lived experience and other interested members of our community as part of a far-reaching co-design process.
The service co-design focused on mental health, chronic conditions management, and alcohol and other drugs (AOD) support services.
Through a series of workshops, phone interviews and surveys, we discussed with the community what was working well, what could be improved and what ideas they had for enhancing the services that we appoint health providers to deliver.
The co-design process was completed across three phases that allowed WVPHN to gain deeper insight into what matters to people providing and visiting WVPHN funded services.
The Learn Phase in April and May focused on generating a list of enablers and barriers for accessing current primary health services in the region. Participants shared their experiences and information from research, how other services operate and program evaluation findings were also analysed.
The Design Phase was carried out between June and August and built upon the outcomes of the Learn Phase to develop new services and service components. The aim of this phase was to think of solutions to address challenges raised by co-design participants.
Finally, participants from the Learn Phase and the Design Phase were invited to attend four Test and Refine sessions in September. WVPHN gathered feedback on the ideas developed from the learnings and themes of the co-design so far.
Three key ideas for service redesign were presented during this final phase:
- Collaborative service contracts – contracting services that bring together a spectrum of care (e.g. mental health, chronic conditions and AOD)
- Facilitation of partnerships – strengthening and nurturing partnerships between our service providers to facilitate smoother referral pathways, improving coordination and access to care.
- Developing centralised hubs – bringing multidisciplinary teams together virtually or in a physical space to respond to specific needs of the local community they support.
The co-design process determined that these three ideas have the potential to deliver better patient care through improved access to services, connected and coordinated support and greater consistency across services.
Following the release of the Service Redesign Co-design Report, WVPHN will use the learnings to inform the how, where and when we appoint providers to deliver primary health care services in our region.
We will now continue to work with others within the health care sector in western Victoria to develop service ideas further.
WVPHN will then move on to tendering for providers to deliver a renewed set of health services for mental health, chronic conditions and AOD support that provide the best outcomes for our region.
Many thanks to everyone who participated in our co-design process. All your voices have been essential in helping us move toward a coordinated and connected system.
View the key documents of the Service Redesign Co-design below: