Quality Improvement tool for re-designing healthcare service-user journeys with COVID-19 risk assessment & mitigation

In order to deliver business as normal performance, healthcare care providers will need to reconfigure almost all services (many currently in abeyance) to accommodate the future challenges of covid-19 (For example; pulsed lock-downs, isolation of the vulnerable, new testing & tracing regimes, disrupted supply chains, new working practices & new spatial demands on facilities). Quality Improvement (QI) approaches currently provide a research informed framework of tools for local innovation in healthcare. A wide variety of QI tools currently support NHS QI work, drawn from sectors like manufacturing. Over the last 12 months NHS Tayside has integrated a services of additional QI tools based on Service Design into its QI Programmes. These design approaches work alongside established QI tools to map the service-user (patient) perspective. This proposal describes the development of an online QI tool that will support the challenge of mapping, evaluating and reconfiguring services that take account of the evolving risks & challenges of COVID-19. NHS Tayside will provide the platform for tool development, NHS Education for Scotland (NES) will provide specialist QI guidance & access to wide networks for dissemination. UoStrathclyde will provide service design research expertise. Development will involve: capturing lessons learnt from recently established COVID-19 pathways, integration of proven service design tools with established risk management tools, collation of research into COVID-19 risks and mitigations, synthesis and testing of tool templates and development of online training to deliver the new tool in a QI context. Tool effectiveness will be evaluated. Knowledge gained will be valuable and widely transferable to other service sectors within the service economy, challenged with redesigning & implementing COVID-19 mitigations.