By Julian Thomas | 25 Nov 2016

I was pleased to present to the National Primary Health Care Conference this week on some exciting work Urbis has been doing with South Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network (SEMPHN).

Primary Health Networks are charged with adopting a commissioning approach to regional primary health service planning and coordination. Commissioning remains a relatively new approach in Australia, but is essentially a cycle of needs assessment and priority setting, service development, service provider engagement and evaluation.

This year, we’ve worked closely with SEMPHN to develop and trial an innovative approach to health service commissioning focused on improving access to primary health care for people experiencing homelessness.

Julian Thomas

Urbis then worked with stakeholders to figure out what service design parameters were essential to an achievable project, and the types of immediate, short and long term outcomes we should expect to see along the way. This work ultimately informed the specifications then released to market, and a consortium of community health, a hospital, welfare services and a housing agency were successful through a competitive process.

We completed an intensive desktop analysis, service mapping and roundtables with stakeholders to assess the ‘state of play’ in the region. Twelve diverse stakeholders then joined us in a formal co-design process, the initial outcome was the definition of three potential priority problems, including the project ultimately chosen by SEMPHN: improving access to hepatitis C treatment.

Our client placed strong emphasis on consumer participation in the planning and design of services that affect them, and so we sat down with 20 individuals experiencing homelessness to test out early thinking and get their ideas about what was going to work.

Urbis then worked with stakeholders to figure out what service design parameters were essential to an achievable project, and the types of immediate, short and long term outcomes we should expect to see along the way. This work ultimately informed the specifications then released to market, and a consortium of community health, a hospital, welfare services and a housing agency were successful through a competitive process.

We’re now working alongside them to see how well they go. We’ll explore whether the consortium has the impact they’re hoping for, and whether the ‘co-design’ process delivered a better project.

Kudos to SEMPHN for their willingness to try something new – we’re looking forward to reporting on the learnings in mid 2017.

For more information on how Urbis can help you on your next health care project, please contact our policy and social advisory experts below.

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