Using Design Thinking for Co-Creating an Integrated Care Pathway Including Hospital at Home for Older Adults with an Acute Moderate-Severe Respiratory Infection in the Netherlands

Introduction: Acute respiratory infections are common in frail, community-dwelling older people and are accompanied by considerable diagnostic and prognostic uncertainties. Inadequately coordinated care is associated with unnecessary hospital referral and admission with potential iatrogenic harm. Therefore, we aimed to co-create a regional integrated care pathway (ICP), including a hospital at home journey.

Developing the ICP: Tasked with using design thinking methodology, stakeholders from regional healthcare facilities, together with patient representatives, were assigned to different focus groups based on their expertise. The focus of each session was to co-create ideal patient journeys suitable for embedding in the ICP.

Results: Based on these sessions, a regional cross-domain ICP was developed that comprises three patient journeys. The first journey included a hospital at home track, the second a tailored visit, with priority assessment, to regional emergency departments, and the third concerned referral to readily available nursing home ‘recovery-beds’ under the supervision of an elderly care medicine specialist.

Conclusion: Using design thinking and involving end-users during the whole process, we created an ICP for community-dwelling frail older people with moderate-severe acute respiratory infections. This resulted in three realistic patient journeys, including a hospital at home track, which will be implemented and evaluated in the near future.