Case Studies: Health Sector

Green Prescriptions

• Case Studies: Health Sector
• People centric self care
• Modelling diabetes interventions
• Dynamic Modelling to improve Renal Services
• Healthy eating & healthy action - collaboration for success
• Innovations in Primary Health Information
• Green Prescriptions

Taking a developmental programme and building it into national infrastructure.

How can an established programme of physical activity referrals be improved to extend its reach and effectiveness, particularly among Maori and Pacific people? Synergia’s analysis of motivations and perceptions, combined with system modelling of behaviours and interventions has supported a major programme expansion.

ISSUE
SPARC had been developing the national Green Prescriptions programme for a decade. The programme was successful but had reached natural limitations in its current form. Synergia needed to understand the constraints and to design a new business model that retained integrity to the clinical evidence but enabled growth and development.

SOLUTION
Two analytical approaches were used to understand the system. Structured research with stakeholders was undertaken to understand the behaviour of the system and why the programme was not working for Maori and Pacific people. This component developed an understanding of the ‘soft system’ of motivations, perceptions and context for the various players in the system.

System dynamics modeling was used to develop a model for participant flow through a system that included interventions by GPs and sports trusts. The model used population data and was driven by assumptions based on published papers. The simulation identified system weaknesses, leverage points for change and enabled scenario analysis of various strategic design options.

OUTCOME
The outcome was a strategic design document, which outlined a series of changes to the programme model that would increase effectiveness, improve flexibility, develop continuous learning cycles and enable scalability from a boutique programme to become significant national infrastructure.

An investment proposal, based on the Synergia model, was approved by Cabinet and led to a $10 million dollar investment in Green Prescriptions.