About Integrated Care Pathways
Integrated Care Pathways is our innovative way of managing people with injuries that require multiple rehabilitation services. Learn about where it started and the benefits we have seen so far.
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What is it
Integrated Care Pathways (ICP) is our provider-led service delivery model we designed in partnership with the sector. It puts the patient at the centre of their recovery and brings together an interdisciplinary team of health providers to support the patient with their recovery journey.
As part of the interdisciplinary team, it gives heath providers the flexibility to design an integrated, coordinated and effective treatment plan, focused on enabling the patient to achieve their rehabilitation goals rather than providing siloed services.
This is an innovative way of managing people with injuries that require multiple rehabilitation services. Patients follow an integrated, customised and coordinated plan to move them smoothly from injury to recovery.
ICP has been designed for patients needing more integrated, specialised and coordinated treatment.
The aim is to improve outcomes for patients with similar injury types and increase the quality and efficiency of their recovery.
A new way of working
We’re working more collaboratively with our healthcare providers to focus on what really matters to us all – patient outcomes and their rehabilitation goals.
Health providers have the space to use their expertise to develop and deliver a treatment plan that puts the injured person at the centre of their recovery.
We’re here when a clear pathway can’t be found due to the complexity of the patient's rehabilitation needs, or when a patient's recovery isn’t going as well as it should.
We want to enable more open and transparent communication for providers working with us, so it will be a new way of working for some.
How we got here
We wanted to transform how we work with the health sector to improve patient outcomes. So, we engaged extensively with the health sector on elective services and identified problems and opportunities.
We found there was a need to address fragmented systems. Our existing services would support specific parts of a patient's rehabilitation needs, leading to services being delivered in silos, and clients potentially receiving variable treatment. There was an opportunity for us to be more integrated and innovative with the sector, increase equity to services, and improve outcomes for patients.
Working in partnership with the sector, we developed care pathways that aim to provide access to multiple rehabilitation services, in a coordinated way.
This has led to our largest test of value-based commissioning for clients who experience musculoskeletal injuries – the Escalated Care Pathways (ECP) pilot.
Benefits we’ve seen
The ECP pilot has demonstrated considerable benefits to patients and providers
An important part of ECP is capturing patient reported outcome measures (PROM) and patient reported experience measures (PREM).
Collecting health outcome measures help us better understand a patient's recovery journey and what’s important to them. They help us understand the value of the services we provide, equity across client groups, particularly Māori, and guide service design and improvement.
So far, the data demonstrates significant improvement in outcome and high levels of satisfaction.
- 89% of Māori and 87% of non-Māori who have exited the pathway and completed their outcomes surveys are reporting improved health outcomes.
- 95% of Māori and non-Māori who completed their outcomes surveys are telling us they’re having a positive patient reported experience.
- For clients who have been supported by the programme, we’re seeing a downward trend of reinjury and are likely to prevent the need for surgery.
In April 2022, we surveyed our current ECP providers about the ECP pilot.
- 88% of respondents (n=153; 18% survey response rate) were satisfied with ECP and 90% felt that the effectiveness of dealing with ACC patients under ECP has improved compared to business as usual.
- A large majority of the respondents agreed that interdisciplinary team approach is more effective in creating the best recovery plans for patients. They also agreed that the ECP way of working enables a shared view of a patient’s recovery journey and outcomes and leads to better outcomes for patients.
- The respondents see many benefits to ECP and would like to see this initiative rolled out more widely with ‘fine tuning’ of certain aspects.