Prehabilitation: driver of care transformation (PAZOEV)

For the transformation in care towards health and appropriate care, which is needed to ensure the affordability and high quality of care, prehabilitation can play a leading role.

Centre of Expertise Health Innovation

gezondheid en passende zorg

Prehabilitation is the principle of using counselling to improve the health of patients before surgery. It can play a leading role in transforming healthcare towards health and appropriate care., which is needed to ensure the affordability and high quality of care. Even for people diagnosed with cancer, it is important to begin an operation or treatment programme in the best possible health condition and to emerge from it as healthy as possible.

Blueprint for further transformation

The PAZOEV project specifically focuses on the adoption and utilisation of scientifically validated, personalised prehabilitation in the South Holland Medical Delta region. PAZOEV stands for ‘Prehabilitatie als zorgtransformatievliegwiel’ (prehabilitation as care transformation flywheel) or as a driver of care transformation. This means that it focuses primarily on lifestyle and environmental adaptations of people who have a relatively high health risk and are preparing for major surgery, for example in connection with cancer, heart disease or a transplant. These use cases create a blueprint for the continued transformation of our health and care system.

Flywheel for cultural change

The programme serves as a flywheel for a cultural shift towards health, lifestyle and living environment, participation and mattering from targeted, indicated preventive care, and prehabilitation. For this purpose, the social domain, healthcare institutions, and healthcare professionals get involved in the lives and environments of patients and their informal caregivers. It requires a behavioural shift among organisations and professionals to ensure that health, lifestyle and living environment, and participation and mattering become the norm before, during and after treatment.

Objective

The objectives of the project are:

  • Specifically implement prehabilitation in the perioperative care pathways - from home to care and back home again.
  • Monitor and evaluate the transdisciplinary perioperative care pathway and assess cost-effectiveness (efficiency and effectiveness) of this care.
  • Achieve structural embedding of prehabilitation as appropriate - and thus reimbursed - care in the perioperative pathway.
  • Gain knowledge and experience in implementing, monitoring and evaluating prehabilitation. We do this innovatively and with a focus on using prehabilitation as an intended flywheel, to contribute to generic health and care transformation.

Duration

The four-year project started on 1 September 2024 and will continue until 31 August 2028.

Team

  • Lottie Kuijt - Evers
  • Miriam Heemskerk
  • Joke Korevaar

Collaboration

For this project, The Hague University of Applied Sciences is collaborating with:

More information

This project is also named on the Medical Delta website.

Contact

Joke Korevaar ([email protected]