Enabling health system innovation and change

To deliver high quality, sustainable healthcare that meets patients’ needs, we need to identify gaps and challenges, and capitalise on opportunities that may lead to new ways of delivering care.

Clinicians and health staff need redesign skills to sustain changes in the delivery of healthcare, whether we are refining current practises through continuous improvement; developing new ideas; piloting new approaches or expanding them at scale.

Innovating through redesign

The ACI partners with the University of Tasmania to deliver a Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Redesign. Next month, we will celebrate our third graduation in 2023, from a year-long program that teaches frontline health staff vital transferable skills in service improvement and innovation, as well as project and change management. Participants apply the redesign methodology to a healthcare delivery challenge in their local area. Outcomes and learnings are shared across the system to optimise outcomes, including on our Innovation Exchange.

More than 800 NSW Health staff have completed the program and have been able to implement real change in their local services, while becoming ‘redesign champions’, sharing the knowledge to encourage more innovation. Often, this has also helped to advanced participants' careers, like our recent graduate Melissa Rahmate, who was recently appointed Innovation Manager in the Northern NSW Local Health District. Melissa shares more about her experience in our guest editorial.

Adapting to local needs

As part of our toolbox of improvement and transformation methods, applying clinical redesign into practice can take different approaches. The ACI is partnering across the system to redesign clinical care in a way that meets local needs and is supported by training and collaboration between health services.

A good example is the Same Day Hip and Knee Replacement alternative care pathway for patients to access joint replacement surgery and be discharged within 24 hours. Our teams worked with partners to adapt an evidence-based model that is now being implemented at partnering sites across NSW.

The redesign approach involved a comprehensive diagnostic assessment conducted at each site to identify challenges, gaps, and opportunities in their current joint replacement service. This resulted in a tailored plan at each site to respond to local needs. A webinar series and Surgery Resources SharePoint site helped to foster capability building, knowledge sharing and networking between sites.

Our teams are employing a range of different redesign and change management approaches on the NSW Government’s menopause initiative and the Safeguards model of care to support children and young people experiencing mental health crisis. Workshops, drop in sessions, events and individual coaching are providing necessary supports to local project teams to implement new approaches to care in their area.

ACI is also partnering with other organisations within NSW Health to increase change capability by teaching change methodology. We have delivered workshops to change and adoption specialists in eHealth to support major transformation programs with system-wide impacts; as well as to Net Zero Leads and Sustainability Officers, supporting them to develop and implement scalable, low-carbon models of care for NSW.

We continue to build the toolbox of methods to develop flexible and responsive approaches that support culture and behaviour change. It is also important to provide opportunities that share knowledge and showcase local innovations. I hope to share more about this work in 2023.