Redesign Local Health Service
for the Elderly
Role
When
Process designer & facilitator
8/2020 - 6/2021
WHY
Public health services in Thailand were mostly designed for acute events. However, the health services required for the elderly are, for example, long-term care, palliative care, intermediate care, or dementia care. These types of care must be continuous and holistic - in which the existing local healthcare system was not previously designed for.
As more people are getting above 65 (30% in 2030 in Thailand), we, therefore, need to redesign better health services for the elders to match the current context - so they can stay active and be less dependent as long as possible.
I and the team at RISE IMPACT have been working on this challenge to redesign the local health service for our senior fellows, and also for ourselves in the future.
HOW
I designed and facilitated the policy process to redesign the local health service network. It was an iterative design process - we revisited the system's stakeholders mapping and interventions many times until we found the conclusion among stakeholders.
Listen to the systems
Designed and facilitated 1-day dialogue with all local health service providers in Chiang Mai to gain insights, understand the patient journeys, and identify pain points from their perspectives.
Frame the systems:
Identify gap and
the leverage point
Elaborated the patient journeys of the 4 popular cares for the elderly i.e. intermediate care, long-term care, dementia care, and palliative care. Identified the most common pain points among these services and designed interventions that will improve many services at once.
Define the desired future
& possibility
Designed and conducted 2 workshops. The first one was to validate the ideas with local stakeholders from 3 other provinces and align the desired future. Then we made sense of the data and designed the intervention. The second workshop was conducted to explore the possibility of the intervention with policy makers and implementers.
Synthesize & make a policy recommendation
Came up with 4 validated strategies:
The holistic elderly data to synchronize among the local representative units of Ministry of Health, Ministry of Interior, and Ministry of Social Development and Human Security.
Establishing the Care Coordination Unit to shift the coordination workload from local health service providers.
More service for the family carers i.e. Community respite services and support groups so they can have a break time and boost up mental strength.
Improving the transportation for the elderly. Guideline for the local government must be provided.
OUTCOME
The policy set to improve the local health service network for the elderly was validated and agreed by the important stakeholders. The implementation details were also developed by taking into account all possible bottlenecks.
We got the committed groups of stakeholders and authorities who want to carry the ideas to implementation. By selecting the right participants in the processes, we onboarded the local government representative who agreed to implement the initiatives, the representative from the Department of Older Persons who would revisit the policy master plan.