Using Patient Journey Modelling to Visualise the Impact of Policy Change on Patient Flow in Community Care

Health policy plays a crucial role in community care, particularly within care programs such as ComPacks. ComPacks is a short-term care program administered by New South Wales (NSW) department of health which runs for up to 6-weeks and its goal is to prevent or minimise hospital readmission. Compliance to the ComPacks health policies is required in order to gain financial support from overnment bodies, however when the Government makes changes to service policies, this may potentially cause ripple effects to the workflow of the service and increase pressures on care providers, which in turn may affect the patient. Utilising a multi-layer visualisation tool can help identify whether changes made to policy are impacting patient flow in a positive or negative way. This research study investigates the use of an emerging patient journey modelling technique to better understand service design in a community care setting, whilst also determining the impact of State-level policy interventions.