How our Public Health Systems can become more efficient in implementing emergency interventions for the elderly?
Dr. Ursula Mühle-Schaeffer
Health Innovation Professional. Speaker & Design Thinking Coach. Currently I am building up the new Bavarian Digital Public Health Group.
How often have you asked yourself or discussed with colleagues that there are so many good solutions out there to help patients and citizens but it takes too long or never to get implemented? How often have you been unsuccessful because of long ways of validations, or responsibilities? In an ideal scenario you have a solid health governance structure and strong operation that facilitate the uptake.
As most of you know, I burn for bringing innovations to the users fast - e.g. through design thinking or other innovation approaches. During the pandemic, when Bavaria declared a public health emergency, I also decided to dedicate my innovation and management experience to helping to protect those in most needs, namely the elderly and residents living in long term care facilities. I got the opportunity to became part of the Task Force Care Homes, which I helped to set up and run within a team of highly experienced colleagues and which is a coordinated approach to support local health authorities and facilities to mitigate the risks of COVID-19.
As were were and are dealing with an emergency that have huge impact of vulnerable groups, we needed to make sure to react fast and initiate that the right measures are taken so that the residents were protected from SARS-CoV-2 entering and spreading their homes. And were were not dealing with a small group: In Bavaria we have about 150.000 residents in Long term care facilities and about 140.000 personnel working there.
Within the last 6 Month we ran about 1,591 missions in about 1,454 care homes (out of 2.199), thereby making sure to initiate immediate testing, ensuring the implementation of hygiene and infection control, helping the authorities to secure staff and also taking preventative measures. This measure go along with policy objectives that were also recommended by the WHO for protecting the elderly in times of COVID-19.
We have published the first learnings of the work during the last 6 months and they will guide the implementation of a more regular structure for emergency preparedness. As this might also be of interest for other implementation structures, let me briefly share the key learnings we have taken out so far and which are also published in the below article in health management in more details.
(1) Central Coordination matters. During the first part of the pandemic, legal preconditions allowed us deployment and integrate different units to be able to deliver support. With the introduction of the State of Emergency, Bavaria put in place a legal mechanism that allowed for coordinated cooperation across otherwise independent administrative units such as ministries, local councils and alike, and thus enabled the cooperation of two units, that was otherwise not possible.
(2) Capacity of specialists. In order to be able to support those in need, you need to have experts in place, that can deliver the support and consult. Our Task Force Care Homes, was comprised of 75 specialists, 60 of them care home auditors or the Medical Service of Health Insurance in Bavaria and 15 of them medical doctors, health management and public health specialist from the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority authority, who were dedication almost their full time to helping fight the pandemic.
(3) Effective health management operations. According to our analysis and internal evaluation, the Task Force could only be so effective through the dedication of each contributing individual, as well as through the management structures and operations that were put in place for immediate decision-making and operational excellence that allowed rapid updates.
As we have pointed it out in our article, the Task Force Care Homes was established as an interim solution. For a transition into a more resilient health systems, more systematic research and insights are necessary, such as a comparative analysis of what measures different countries took, what went well and what went wrong. We still hope that we could share some insights, that might also others to implement their interventions fast for the benefit of the citizens.
Reference: Read the full article here: https://healthmanagement.org/c/healthmanagement/issuearticle/protecting-vulnerable-populations-from-covid-19
Public Health and Sustainable Development Leader 🆖 2022 West African Leadership Award Winner | Keynote Speaker | Knowledge Hunter-Gatherer | Future Whisperer | Board Member
4yDr. Ursula Mühle, Thank you for this thought-provoking article. I have been a long time advocate for public health systems to begin to look at #GeriatricPublicHealth as a necessity moving forward. COVID-19 and its peculiar manifestations, has further underscored this point. Back to the main substance of your article - it is my opinion that the type of governance structure you emplace in this kind of situation has success dependency around three main factors; political will, the adaptability of the structure and the capacity of the implementers. The higher the scores across these three areas, the likelihood of good outcomes.
Senior Lecturer
4yCongratulations @UrsulaMuhle for the publication of this very important best practice article. Just read in @politico how Europe and European countries are filling the vacuum that the lack of US leadership created in the leadership and governance of our global public health systems. Fully agree with @IlonaKickbush that we need strong health governance and leadership in Europe to address global health challenges such as the current and perhaps future pandemics. Countries and regions i.e. Germany and Bavaria have been leading the way in the first wave and are seen as a positive example of protecting the lives of the most vulnerable people in care homes by setting the right priorities, allocating, redistributing, deploying the appropriate resources, and offering timely and useful operational guidance and support tailored to the needs of these facilities and setting a great example for other countries. Thanks #UrsulaMuhle for sharing!