With the continued focus on social prescribing as a ‘high-value, low-cost’ way of improving the responsiveness of the health system, we thought it would be worthwhile to unpack some of what we learnt in that project to share with other PHNs commissioning social prescribing service models or linkage program providers. This blog is the first of three in a South Eastern NSW case study series: what is social prescribing?

Recently, our team has closed out a number of PHN specific design projects. As a means of providing value for our PHN colleagues, we thought we would share some specific service design insights and tips for you to consider before running your next service design process.

Any provider of health and social services should regularly review their service models against the latest evidence, policy priorities and practice guidance. The following blog explores the inputs we use to inform service redesign and create "implementation ready" service models. Read more here.

Needs assessment is a term that you have most likely heard of if you work for a local government or council. However, what exactly is it, why should you consider conducting one and what is the best approach? 

The Buurtzorg Model has transformed community-based aged nursing in the Netherlands, at scale, to keep older adults healthy and out of hospital. But can the Buurtzorg Model be translated to the Australian context? Is it possible to reverse or better leverage the trend of an increasingly non-clinical in-home aged care workforce? How do we shift from delivering aged care services transactionally to relationally?

Market-led approaches to health and social services are considered to be a responsive, innovative and efficient mechanism in meeting the needs of consumers. At Beacon Strategies we were lucky enough to join one of our partner organisations for the journey.

One of our key projects during the second half of 2017 was to support a client in planning their expansion into Queensland. In this article, we describe the steps we undertook, what we found, and how a similar approach can help ensure organisations considering expansion to do so successfully.

We were engaged by Acacia Ridge Community Support Inc (ARCSI) to co-design a service model of community-based antenatal care coordination for the Acacia Ridge and nearby communities. A few weeks ago, we proudly presented the findings of this service design process at a workshop led by ARCSI and attended by a range of interested stakeholders.

Today's blog post is going to cover a piece of work we are currently doing in collaboration with Acacia Ridge Community Support Inc! For those not familiar with what 'service mapping' is, it is essentially a stocktake of available services in the local community to better understand what is available.