Improving the mental health care process in response to Covid-19 pandemic: The case of a penitentiary mental health division

Covid-19 outbreak led all organizations to reorganize their processes to prevent infection and contagion risk. All healthcare facilities, included penitentiary mental health services, had to redesign their processes to safely deliver care services. In this paper, the case of a Penitentiary Mental He...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2023-10, Vol.18 (10), p.e0293492-e0293492
Main Authors: Nuzzi, Angela, Latorre, Valeria, Semisa, Domenico, Scozzi, Barbara
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Detention of persons
Evaluation
Health care reform
Infection
Medical care
Medicine and Health Sciences
People and Places
Psychiatric services
Quality management
Social Sciences
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Summary:Covid-19 outbreak led all organizations to reorganize their processes to prevent infection and contagion risk. All healthcare facilities, included penitentiary mental health services, had to redesign their processes to safely deliver care services. In this paper, the case of a Penitentiary Mental Health Division located in southern Italy is presented. Soft System Methodology and Business process management principles and techniques are adopted to analyse and redesign the detainees' mental health care process. The process, characterized by direct, close and prolonged contact with patients, exposes detainees and healthcare staff to a high Covid-19 infection risk. Through document analysis, interviews with the actors involved in the process and direct observation, the process's inefficiencies and criticalities are identified. The process is redesigned to make it compliant with Covid-19 prevention provisions and national penitentiary regulations and address the other criticalities. The proposed methodological approach-which innovatively combines Soft System Methodology and Business Process Management-constitutes a human-centered process-based redesign approach that can be used both in healthcare and other organizational settings.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0293492