Health$en$e^TM: Developing a Board Game on Value-based Healthcare Financing

Abstract

Background. With rising healthcare costs, there is a need to transform healthcare financing to provide better care value and sustainability. Healthcare providers and consumers need to be educated about value-based care and financing. This can be done through games. Intervention & Methods. We describe the design of our board game Health$en$eTM which aims to let players simulate the role of funding patients’ care as the patients move across the care value chain. In the game, players will learn how certain care funding innovations help to optimize healthcare expenditure for better value. Discussion & Conclusion. We envisage that some game elements of Health$en$eTM may motivate players to transform healthcare financing systems in the real world. We formulate a matrix to predict the possible associations between game elements and psychological core drives relevant to Health$en$eTM. Further analysis of the game’s potential impact and validation of the matrix could be conducted in due course after the game is launched in a workshop.

Students as policymakers and policy advocates: Role-playing evidence-based health policies

“…Rather, it can be considered as a new practice with potential that can be replicated, tested, and rigorously examined. Finally, the transferability of the knowledge and skills from the classroom to real life remains unknown and require further examination, like previous studies (Murphy et al, 2016;Tan et al, 2020). Thus, while the study contributes to the design and experience of simulation activity for health policy, evaluation of such experiences and impact on learning and transferability to the real life is still needed.…”

“…While novice students might perceive the role playing activity as highly realistic, this might be due to their limited understanding of its equivalency to real situations. While some scholars have reported the importance of having no prior experience in simulation activities to ensure simulation flow and promote participation outreach (Tan et al, 2020), others have considered it as affecting students’ perceptions and thus, simulation fidelity (Tun et al, 2015). This brings into discussion simulation fidelity.…”

A Tribute to Some of Our Pioneers, Past and Present as We Move Beyond 50 Years With Simulation & Gaming

“…Finally, we introduce our last article in this issue, one by Tan et al (2020) that describes the design of a board game to simulate the role of funding across the healthcare financing system. Recall earlier in this editorial the call by James Coleman that games and simulations should be applied to social theory to address real-life circumstances.…”