Primary and preventive care are the fundamental building block of healthcare systems, says Isabel Arango, Mott Macdonald Principal Advisor and Regional Healthcare Consulting Lead
Across many healthcare systems, strategy is the intent or ongoing process to take population health management and primary care to the next level, as access to the primary care and preventive services are crucial for all populations throughout all stages of life. The adoption of value-based models has further emphasised this need.
Why should there be an increased focus on primary and preventive care services?
Studies have demonstrated the effects of a robust and accessible primary care and preventive delivery system. These effects include improvements to population health, life expectancy and greater health equity at lower costs.
In the UK, for example, spending focused on prevention has been found to be three or four times more cost-effective at improving health outcomes than money spent on curing illnesses.
Furthermore, regardless of the initiatives and improvements, lower life expectancies are still a challenge for many sections of the population due to several factors. Among these factors are location (rural areas), and cultural and socioeconomic challenges. These inequities became evident during the COVID-19 pandemic.
How can health systems ensure the entire population is served and improve health equity and efficiency throughout the system?
The answer involves a comprehensive and coordinated approach that engages all facets of social, mental, and physical health. The entire ecosystem and stakeholders (providers, policy makers, payers, and employers) and most importantly patients, must be engaged in order to produce the desired outcomes, addressing present and future needs. As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, so should the way population health is integrated and managed. There is a need for increased focus on initiatives that include disease prevention and management, care coordination, patient education and engagement, as well as other activities aimed at improving population health.
It is no surprise, then, that health systems throughout the world are re-evaluating their current models of care and infrastructure, opting for designs that tackle the seen and unseen drivers of health with integrated primary care at its core. Technology, data, work-force capacity building, evidence-based medicine and patient empowerment tools are all components required to engineer and execute a design that will service the intended population and yield the desired outcomes while optimising care.
Given the complexities with the physical and operational design of said infrastructure, even the largest and most sophisticated health systems will find an undertaking of this magnitude a challenge. Particularly if this involves the continuation of operations during the implementation of initiatives. Post pandemic, many health systems are turning to technical experts with interdisciplinary expertise that can provide consulting and advisory services in order to assist them.
How can Mott MacDonald assist health systems in achieving their population management and primary care goals?
At Mott MacDonald our purpose is to improve society by considering social outcomes in everything we do. Our healthcare clients benefit from over 30 years’ in-house technical expertise in cross-cutting sectors essential to the development and improvement of health systems. With a focus on digital innovation, our dedicated healthcare team includes strategists, demand and capacity modelling specialists, operators, healthcare planners, clinicians, cost consultants, project managers, facility management, digital health (digital twin) and estate planning specialists. We are experts in Integrated Impact Assessments (IIAs) – a key resource document to inform decision-makers, key stakeholders and the public of the potential impacts arising from the reconfiguration of healthcare services. This considers and evaluates the potential health outcomes and inequalities, carbon and environmental impacts from the reconfiguration plans.
More specifically, what is your primary care experience?
We have an in-depth understanding of primary care services and estates. Our experience encompasses an end-to-end process of estates requirements built upon patient need and models of care. Our team members have clinical and operational primary care experience, including the development of clinical and estates strategies of primary care networks (groups of GP Practices in the NHS in England). This work involves the creation of primary care network profiles detailing clinical services, population need, growth and disease prevalence and profiling, future models of care and priorities, functional estates requirements and full costing and appraisal of current assets.
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we supported a similar exercise as part of the Vision 2030 programme to improve the efficiency and delivery of public health sector services. This was completed across 75 primary healthcare centres (PHCs) in Riyadh and Jeddah.
And finally, for many years, we have also supported NHS England as their national evaluation partner. Initially evaluating primary care initiatives being piloted through a programme called The Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund and subsequently an evaluation of the General Practice Access Fund and latterly evaluation of the Time for Care team. Currently, we are the national evaluation partner for the NHS England Primary Care Transformation Team’s main programme of work.
Mott MacDonald employs 18,000 staff in 135 countries worldwide, of which over 1000 operate out of the Middle East. Across all our work, we are privileged to be part of clients’ solution in order to obtain their desired outcomes with primary and preventive care, while also satisfying our company’s goal of creating healthier people and healthier societies.