Most healthcare improvement focuses on incremental changes to patient pathways. The increasing pressures facing all healthcare systems, however, demand new systems-based approaches to help identify shared ambitions, challenges and opportunities for innovation.
Today we ran a one-day workshop at the Ulster Hospital, South East Health & Social Care Trust to look at new ways to innovate within Urgent & Unscheduled Care. Over the last 5 weeks a comprehensive map visualising the connections between general practice, community based health and care, acute services and a myriad of agencies such as the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service has been co-created through a series of 90-minute online workshops attended by over 75 stakeholders. At today’s face-to-face workshop the map was used to define the aims of the service and current challenges, explore the patient’s perspective and identify opportunities for improvement across the system.
Going into the autumn of 2023, as winter pressures begin to impact Urgent & Unscheduled Care, the new whole-systems approach aims to deliver a paradigm shift in the way professionals collaborate with patients and service-users to deliver change.