Background and Aims: Over the past two-years ACC has completed a redesign of its pain management services to address key delivery challenges. An action research approach was utilized to support the co-design of these services to ensure the redesigned service best met the needs of patients, clinicians and ACC staff. A new service delivery model was developed and refined in conjunction with eight pain management services in Auckland, New Zealand.
Methods: An independent research organization was engaged to undertake action research to support the development of the service design. Completed in three phases, this included:
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An evaluation design and context phase
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Data collection and formative feedback
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Mixed methods data integration and analysis
Information was gathered over a period of three months with rapid feedback provided to ACC every two-weeks.
Conclusions: The use of an action research approach to service co-design was invaluable in developing a new model of pain management in New Zealand. This approach allowed incremental changes to be made based on participant feedback and tested in the context in which they are delivered. This allowed for only those changes which improved client outcome and experience to be adopted in the new service. Key changes included triage, expectation setting, early intervention, cross agency collaboration and staff training. In addition, this approach increased engagement and satisfaction of clinicians working in the services. The new model has now been implemented nationally with outcomes benchmarked across Australasia using ePPOC (electronic Persistent Pain Outcomes Collaboration).