Charting a Course for World-Class Behavioral Health and Addictions Care
CHALLENGE
Struggling to combat some of the highest levels of unemployment and food insecurity in Canada, a provincial health system charged with serving as the critical linchpin for behavioral health and addictions programming needed to plan for the future. Located in one of Canada’s most rural provinces, the community struggles with a highly seasonal workforce, with significantly fewer employment opportunities during the cold winter months. Canada’s single payer model means operating budgets are fixed, while demand for services can vary significantly. With buildings that date back as far as 1934, very sparse population density outside of the main cities and a model of care no longer considered appropriate, the client needed to rethink how to best meet the behavioral health and addictions needs of their community while struggling with limited financial resources, infrastructure well past its useful life, on-going workforce recruiting challenges, and a culture hesitant to embrace change.
120+ stakeholder interviews
Customized strategy development
Operational analysis / time-motion studies
Clinical functionality assessment
Patient consumer ethnographic research
Patient consumer experiential analysis
Provider consumer experiential analysis
Asset inventory
Facility condition assessment
Co-creation sessions to explore tomorrow’s behavioral and addictions healthcare
Community and advocate focus groups
Consumer journey mapping for different diagnoses and consumer personas
Customized demand projections and forecasting model
Site of service planning
Key room forecast
Space programming
APPROACH
While the client had imagined this challenge could be solved through a simple facilities master plan, it quickly became apparent that an overhaul of many strategic and operational aspects of the care delivery model would be required.
Blending quantitative data, strategic visioning, ethnographic research and consumer journey mapping, a vision for the future of behavioral health and addictions care was established. Leveraging a series of transformational principles and specifically-defined metrics of programmatic success a comprehensive plan for service delivery across the health system’s region was undertaken.
An interdisciplinary team of behavioral health consumers, provider consumers, community partners, health system leaders and political influencers partnered to co-create solutions tied to the programmatic success metrics established earlier in the engagement.
RESULTS
A comprehensive strategic, campus and facilities master plan for behavioral health and addictions care care across the health system was established. The master plan, captured in a comprehensive document that has been adopted as a roadmap by the provincial legislature will yield a total transformation in how behavioral health and addictions care will be delivered.
New strategic, operational, digital, experiential, and workforce planning were included in the master plan. These, along with aspirational success metrics informed the what, where, why and how of the master plan, ensuring that future evolution of the system’s facilities are done in a manner that responds to the long-term vision for service delivery.
3 days
targeted time from referral to evaluation for all patient consumers in the community setting
4 hours
targeted time from arrival to disposition for behavioral health and addictions patient consumers presenting to the emergency department