The COVID-19 emergency as an opportunity to co-produce an innovative approach to health services provision: the women's antenatal classes move on the web

Manila Bonciani,Ilaria Corazza,Sabina De Rosis

doi:10.1007/s43039-021-00045-6

Manila Bonciani, Ilaria Corazza + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-021-00045-6

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly affected healthcare organizations, leading to the need for reorganizing also maternal care services during pregnancy. The Regional Health Authorities in Tuscany (Italy) promoted the creation of online antenatal classes (ACs). This study illustrates the innovative approach to deliver ACs online and discusses how the collaborative approach in co-producing this innovative solution co-creates value in healthcare. The action research design was based, on one hand, on the indirect involvement of users by analyzing qualitative data collected through a continuous survey to pregnant women and, on the other one, on the direct involvement of managers and health professionals in meetings and workshops. The authors encompassed all necessary changes in organizational practices and facilitated the collaborative process implementation and analysis. The main findings are that moving ACs online has been a relevant choice, since the need of pregnant women to share information and receive emotional support increased in times of crisis. Additionally, in the perspective of health professionals, the new online ACs model emerged as a valuable solution not only for the contingent situation, but also in a long-term perspective to reach more women during pregnancy and to early support them throughout the maternal care pathway. This study shows that the collaborative approach to co-innovate healthcare services provision, such as with ACs online, facilitates the creation of, long-lasting, and integrated solutions in healthcare, to be used also after pandemic period. Finally, despite this action-research is context-specific, the findings presented in this paper may help other healthcare organizations innovate their own strategies in ACs’ provision.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted healthcare organizations in Italy, for the direct burden of case management and preventive measures, and for the need to reorganize the provision of all services, even those not directly affected by the pandemic itself.Despite the difficulties that the situation has entailed, healthcare organizations have faced an unexpected opportunity to carry out transformations and urgent innovations (Berry, 2019) in the service provision model, which would have encountered much resistance in the pre-COVID-19 period (Kellermann & Jones, 2013).The pandemic has been a productive time for collaborative efforts of practitioners, users and researchers together, for coping with the challenges emerged during these unprecedented times, and for facing still-existing inadequacies
Among the women’s comments analyzed, 517 directly included the terms COVID or emergency. This shows the pressure that the pandemic had on the maternal care pathway
The survey comments of women on antenatal classes (ACs) focused on the interruption of the face-to-face meetings of ACs starting from March 2020

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted healthcare organizations in Italy, for the direct burden of case management and preventive measures, and for the need to reorganize the provision of all services, even those not directly affected by the pandemic itself.Despite the difficulties that the situation has entailed, healthcare organizations have faced an unexpected opportunity to carry out transformations and urgent innovations (Berry, 2019) in the service provision model, which would have encountered much resistance in the pre-COVID-19 period (Kellermann & Jones, 2013).The pandemic has been a productive time for collaborative efforts of practitioners, users and researchers together, for coping with the challenges emerged during these unprecedented times, and for facing still-existing inadequacies. The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted healthcare organizations in Italy, for the direct burden of case management and preventive measures, and for the need to reorganize the provision of all services, even those not directly affected by the pandemic itself. Despite the difficulties that the situation has entailed, healthcare organizations have faced an unexpected opportunity to carry out transformations and urgent innovations (Berry, 2019) in the service provision model, which would have encountered much resistance in the pre-COVID-19 period (Kellermann & Jones, 2013). The pandemic has been a productive time for collaborative efforts of practitioners, users and researchers together, for coping with the challenges emerged during these unprecedented times, and for facing still-existing inadequacies. The digitalization of healthcare faced multifactorial challenges (Hashiguchi, 2020), which appeared relaxed during the pandemic. Widen inequalities could have been produced among individuals, patients, users (Tarricone and Rognone, 2020)

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