I’m Still Me: A Narrative For Coordinated Support For Older People

Care coordination should be a means to achieving specific outcomes, rather than an end in itself. In turn, it is important that these outcomes reflect what patients want. In December 2014, National Voices, Age UK and UCLPartners jointly published I’m Still Me, a document that focuses on what older people consider to be the most important outcomes of coordinated support. The report is based on a variety of research methods, including 74 semi-structured interviews with older individuals. The research identifies a number of outcomes which are key to older people, such as maintaining their independence and retaining their own choice in decision making. I’m Still Me also includes a series of ‘I statements’ that summarise what older people have said they want their support to look like. For example: "I am supported to be independent"; “I can do activities that are important to me”; “I can maintain social ...

How do we know? An assessment of integrated community case management data quality in four districts of Malawi

The World Health Organization contracted annual data quality assessments of Rapid Access Expansion (RAcE) proyects to review integrated community case management (iCCM) data quality and the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system for iCCM, adn to suggest ways to improve data quality. 

This data quality assessment illuminates where an otherwise strong M&E system for iCCM fails to ensure some aspects of data quality. Prioritizing data management with documented protocols, additional training and approaches to create efficient supervision practices may improve iCCM data quality. 

Priority setting for health in the context of devolution in Kenya: implications for health equity and community-based primary care

Devolution changes the locus of power within a country from central to sub-national levels. In 2013, Kenya devolved health and other services from central government to 47 new sub-national governments (known as counties). This transition seeks to strengthen democracy and accountability, increase community participation, improve efficiency and reduce inequities. With changing responsibilities and power following devolution reforms, comes the need for priority-setting at the new county level. Priority-setting arises as a consequence of the needs and demand for healthcare resources exceeding the resources available, resulting in the need for some means of choosing between competing demands

Exploring Patient-Reported Barriers to Advance Care Planning in Family Practice

Although patient-centred care has become increasingly important across all medical specialties, when it comes to end of life care, research has shown that treatments ordered are not often concordant with people's expressed preferences. Patient and family engagement in Advance Care Planning (ACP) in the primary care setting could improve the concordance between patients' wishes and the healthcare received when patients cannot speak for themselves. 

Case management service quality and patient-centered care

Providing care that is patient-centered is an important objective in the modern healthcare industry. Despite this objective, hospital inpatient case managers and the services they provide are evaluated routinely without including patients' perspectives. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to fill this research gap by using patient expectations and perceptions to assess the overall quality of and patient satisfaction with hospital case management services.

Patient engagement, autonomy, access to mental care services – the case for integrated care in Crete

Access to comprehensive primary care (PC) services is imperative to address the complex biopsychosocial needs of patients with mental illness and their families, while it holds the potential to safeguard mental health and enhance resilience in communities. Integration of mental health and social care services in primary care has not yet been achieved, while access to such services for the mentally ill is still hindered by patient-, provider- and system-oriented barriers. Improving service integration, quality and access requires active engagement of patients and families in the design and planning of services.

Interprofessional collaboration, interdisciplinary approaches and sound deliberative processes are only the start of initiating discussions to establish the needs of local communities. Mapping care paths, involving stakeholders and engaging in practice-based research are impeded by the organisation and design of care provision, including siloed processes and semantic ambiguity in establishing common ground. Academic centres ought to act as hubs ...

Impact of the person-centred intervention guided self-determination across healthcare settings—An integrated review

The aim of this study was to review the evidence of the existing literature on the impact of guided self-determination across methodologies in different healthcare settings. The conclusion drawn is that overall, guided self-determination proved to have a great impact on patient important outcomes and was useful and well-accepted by the majority of patients and healthcare professionals. Albeit guided self-determination is not a ‘one size fits all’ method. Continuous training and supervision of professionals are a necessary mean when implementing guided self-determination to enhance adoption and sustainability in clinical practice.