Voices on person-centred care

What is person-centred care to a patient, a physician, a nurse, a hospital head of department, an industry representative and a researcher? How do these people, who all have experience of receiving or working with person-centred care, see person-centred care from their perspectives? Short film clips from the University of Gothenburg Centre for Person-centred Care - GPCC. GPCC is an in terdisciplinary research centre, established in January 2010, with the support of the Swedish government's strategic investment in health and care research. Uniquely GPCC has evaluated the effects of person-centred care in controlled studies. This has established that person-centred care is capable of enhancing the efficiency of the care process. Apart from considerable monetary savings resulting from amongst other things shorter hospital stays, significant positive effects from a patient perspective have been seen, as care is adapted to each individual person and his or her resources are made use of.

Partnership, Person-Centredness in Health Care

Person-centred care is an emerging concept in health care. Many people ask what is new about it, and as a matter of fact many health care professionals believe that they work in a person-centred way already. But shifting to a person-centred care practice often involves a profound change in culture and structure, and the key is a different approach in seeing the patient as a partner. The main thing is about being able to listen. Being able to listen to the patient and co-create a care plan; to create a partnership in health care.

The University of Gothenburg Centre for Person-centred Care - GPCC, performs research, education and innovation in person-centred care. Many of the centre’s projects are performed in partnership with Sahlgrenska University Hospital, one of the biggest in Europe, which is closely linked to the University via the The Sahlgrenska Academy.

This short film sets the scene by ...

GPCC Person-centred care research centre web site

This research centre web site contains a range of information, films, presentations, resources and links; from basic information on person-centred care to information on a wide range of individual research projects from health and elderly care and rehabilitation. It also contains news, events, scientific publications and implementation.

The Gothenburg University Centre for Person-centred Care (GPCC) is an interdisciplinary research centre, established in January 2010, with the support of the Swedish government's strategic investment in health and care research. Uniquely GPCC has evaluated the effects of person-centred care in controlled studies. This has established that person-centred care is capable of enhancing the efficiency of the care process. Apart from considerable monetary savings resulting from amongst other things shorter hospital stays, significant positive effects from a patient perspective have been seen, as care is adapted to each individual person and his or her resources are made use of.

(A summary commentary ...

People centred Care in theory and practice

On the 23-25 May 2016, the 16th International Conference on Integrated Care in Barcelona attracted 1200 delegates from nearly 50 countries, and a further 600 persons per day watching events via the live stream.

One of the highlights of the conference, is the speech of Dr Angela Coulter, Senior Research Scientist, from The Nuffield Department of Population Health (NDPH), University of Oxford, UK, about "People centred Care in theory and practice".

Achieving triple integration: The central role of mental health in integrated care

During the 16th International Conference on Integrated Care that was held Barcelona last May,  one of the keynote presentation that was highlighted was "Achieving triple integration: The central role of mental health in integrated care"by Chris Naylor, Senior Fellow and Policy from The King's Fund.

The Spanish version of the video is available here: Achieving triple integration: The central role of mental health in integrated care. 

Governance for new care models

Dr Rachael Addicott, Senior Research Fellow from The King’s Fund, discussed about her research into governance for new care models during the event on Multi-specialty community providers and primary and acute care systems (7 June 2016)

If you are interested in other presentations from this event, click here

SUSTAIN goes live: video-interviews with representatives from the sites

SUSTAIN is a cross-European research project and stands for sustainable tailored integrated care for older people in Europe. The project aims to concretely improve the way care services for older adults are organised and delivered across Europe, and especially for those who have multiple health and social care needs.SUSTAIN is a cross-European project with thirteen partners from nine countries. SUSTAIN is working with fourteen initiatives in seven participating countries. These initiatives aim to achieve integrated care for older people living at home and SUSTAIN will support them in further improving this care.

The project consortium has produced a series of video-interviews aimed at sharing the early experience of professionals directly involved in the implementation of the project within the SUSTAIN sites. In particular, we aimed at getting views and opinions on motivations, goals and objectives, implementation challenges and cross-countries exchenges between the SUSTAIN sites.

The first round of videos ...

People-Centered Integrated Care -Salman Rawaf interview - Minuto Experto 88

Video made by Andalusian School of Public Health in Andalusia with Dr. Salman Rawaf, Professor of Public Health and Director of the WHO Collaborating at the Imperial College London.

Integrated Care Planning for Cancer Patients: A Scoping Review

There has been growing emphasis on the use of integrated care plans to deliver cancer care. However little is known about how integrated care plans for cancer patients are developed including featured core activities, facilitators for uptake and indicators for assessing impact. A scoping review was conducted to explore the components of integrated care plans and contextual factors that influence design and uptake. 

Individualising Chronic Care Management by Analysing Patients’ Needs – A Mixed Method Approach

Modern health systems are increasingly faced with the challenge to provide effective, affordable and accessible health care for people with chronic conditions. As evidence on the specific inmet needs and their impact on health outcomes is limited, practical research is needed to tailor chronic care to individual needs of patients with diabetes. Qualitative approaches to describe professional and informal caregiving will support understanding the complexity of chronic care. Results are intended to provide practical recommendations to be used for systematic implementation of sustainable chronic care models. 

The perceived impact of family physicians on the district health system in South Africa: a cross-sectional survey

The 2008 World Health Report "Primary Health Care-Now More Than Ever" defines strong Primary Health Care (PHC) systems as those systems which offer first contact care that is patient-centred with an orientation to the patient´s family and community context, embedded in a service that is comprehensive, integrated, continuos, and community-orientated, and in which patient-care is well co-ordinated. This report warned against oversimplified approaches to PHC in developing countries, which only focus on priority deseases or rely on unsupported health workers who are poorly equipped for the complexity of PHC. The World Health Assembly supports the report´s recommendation that PHC should be offered by a multidisciplinary team that includes a family physician. 

Integration of community home based care programmes within national primary health care revitalisation strategies in Ethiopia, Malawi, South-Africa and Zambia: a comparative assessment

In 2008, the WHO facilitated the primary health care (PHC) revitalisation agenda. The purpose was to stregthen African health systems in order to address communicable and non-communicable diseases. The aim of this article was to assess the position of civil society-led community home based care programmes (CHBC), which serve the needs of patients with HIV, within this agenda. It examined how their roles and place in health systems evolved, and the prospects for these programmes in national policies and strategies to revitalise PHC, as new health care demand arise. 

Achieving Integrated Care for Older People: Shuffling the Deckchairs or Making the System Watertight For the Future?

Integrated care has been recognised as a key initiative to resolve the issues surrounding care for older people living with multi-morbidity. Multiple strategies and policies have been implemented to increase coordination of care globally however, evidence of effectiveness remains mixed. The reasons for this are complex and multifactorial, yet many strategies deal with parts of the problem rather than taking a whole systems view with the older person clearly at the centre. 

Building Competencies for Integrated Care: Defining the Landscape

As the discussion in integrated care moves from "what needs to be done?" to "how to do we achieve sustainable change?" one of the key questions is "how do we get people to change?". Electronic health records, budgetary processes and governance structures are all important building blocks but achieving the transformation required will ultimately stand or fall on changing how we act. Therefore at the heart of this complexity are two more simple, yet profound questions: how do we learn? And who do we learn from?

Using Patient Reported Outcomes Measures to Promote Integrated Care

Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) have been introduced as standardised outcomes, but have not been implemented widely for disease targeted pathways of care, nor for geriatric patients who prefer functional performance and quality of life

Making sense of integrated care systems, integrated care partnerships and accountable care organisations in the NHS in England

NHS England has recently changed the name of accountable care systems to integrated care systems, which describes more accurately the work being done in the 10 areas of England operating in this way. These updated long read looks at work under way in these systems and at NHS England´s proposals for an accountable care organization contract

Professional Identity Crisis in the Integrated Care Era

This poster reviews and summarize literature on the history of counseling psycology in integrated health care. Next, it will make a case for the necessity of including counseling psychologists´ meaningful contribution to integrated care. Then, using counseling psychology literature, it will demonstrate how integrated health care is consistent with our professional identity as counseling psychologists should be mindful while in the integrated care settings.

Developing and deploying a community healthcare worker-driven, digitally- enabled integrated care system for municipalities in rural Nepal

Integrating care at the home and facility level is a critical yet neglected function of healthcare delivery systems. There are few examples in practice or in the academic literature of affordable, digitally-enabled integrated care approaches embedded within healthcare delivery systems in low- and middle-income countries. Simultaneous advances in affordable digital technologies and community healthcare workers offer an opportunity to address this challenge. This article describe the development of an integrated care system involving community healthcare worker networks that utilize a home-to-facility electronic health record platform for rural municipalities in Nepal.

The King's Fund integrated care summit 2018

As the national rhetoric focuses on supporting the delivery of population health and integrated care, different models of care and new ways of working are being implemented across England. While integrated care systems (ICSs) are emerging to lead on planning and commissioning care for their populations, providers are also working together to deliver integrated care locally. 

A Qualitative Study on Primary Care Integration into an Asian Immigrant-specific Behavioural Health Setting in the United States

 Integrating primary care and behavioural health services improves access to services and health outcomes among individuals with serious mental illness. Integrated care is particularly promising for racial and ethnic minority individuals given higher rates of chronic illnesses and poorer access to and quality of care compared to Whites. However, little is known about integrated care implementation in non-White populations. The aim of this study is to identify facilitators and barriers to successful implementation of primary care-behavioural health integration in a multilingual behavioural healthcare setting.

Barriers and Facilitators to Workforce Changes in Integrated Care

Health systems are faced with an ageing population and an increase in chronic conditions. These challenges require more appropriate approaches than the current largely single-disease and acute-care focussed health care systems. Integrated care is seen as one of the most promising of these approaches by targeting the health system, patient-provider relationships, care process design, communication infrastructures, community resources, and how care is delivered by health professionals. The aim of the study is to investigate the barriers and facilitators to the implementation of workforce changes implemented as part of integrated chronic care interventions.

Understanding new models of integrated care in developed countries: a systematic review

The NHS has been challenged to adopt new integrated models of service delivery that are tailored to local populations. Evidence from the international literature is needed to support the development and implementation of these new models of care. So, the aim of this study aimed to carry out a systematic review of international evidence to enhance understanding of the mechanisms whereby new models of service delivery have an impact on health-care outcomes

The Core Dimensions of Integrated Care: A Literature Review to Support the Development of a Comprehensive Framework for Implementing Integrated Care

As part of the EU-funded Project INTEGRATE, the research sought to develop an evidence-based understanding of the key dimensions and items of integrated care associated with successful implementation across varying country contexts and relevant to different chronic and/or long-term conditions. This paper identifies the core dimensions of integrated care based on a review of previous literature on the topic

A shared culture for change: Evaluating and implementing models of integrated people-centred services

The International Foundation of Integrated Care (IFIC) in partnership with OSAKIDETZA – Basque Health Service, Bioef, Ministry for Health of the Basque Government the City Council of Donostia-San Sebastian and the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa presents the 19th International conference on Integrated Care “Evaluating and implement models of integrated people-centred services” to take place in San Sebastian, the Basque Region in Spain 1-3 April 2019. The conference will bring together researchers, clinicians and managers from around the world who are engaged in the design and delivery of integrated health and social care.

The Integrated Care Academy© Award for Best Paper and Posters will be presented at the conference. All papers presented as oral presentations or posters at the conference will be published in the International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC).

The scientific committee for this conference has been established from international experts who are leading the field of integrated care policy ...

A shared culture for change: Evaluating and implementing models of integrated people-centred services

The International Foundation of Integrated Care (IFIC) in partnership with OSAKIDETZA – Basque Health Service, Bioef, Ministry for Health of the Basque Government the City Council of Donostia-San Sebastian and the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa presents the 19th International conference on Integrated Care “Evaluating and implement models of integrated people-centred services” to take place in San Sebastian, the Basque Region in Spain 1-3 April 2019. The conference will bring together researchers, clinicians and managers from around the world who are engaged in the design and delivery of integrated health and social care.

The Integrated Care Academy© Award for Best Paper and Posters will be presented at the conference. All papers presented as oral presentations or posters at the conference will be published in the International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC).

The scientific committee for this conference has been established from international experts who are leading the field of integrated care policy ...

Person-Centered Integrated Care for Chronic Kidney Disease

The effectiveness of person-centered integrated care strategies for CKD is uncertain. This study conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials to assess the effect of person-centered integrated care for CKD.
It searched MEDLINE, Embase, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (from inception to April of 2016), and selected randomized, controlled trials of person-centered integrated care interventions with a minimum follow-up of 3 months. Random-effects meta-analysis was used to assess the effect of person-centered integrated care.

Innovation of the governance of integrated care

Interest in integrated care is growing. This is reflected in the rising numbers of scientific publications, IJIC’s increased impact factor and the increasing number of participants at IFIC’s international conferences. It is stimulating to see that organizations like the World Health Organisation are developing conceptual frameworks that embrace integrated care. At the same time we know that integrated care does not become reality automatically; it takes a long timeframe. That can be conflicting with ambitions like ‘implementing good practices as fast as possible’ and with the pressure to deliver results in politically set tight time frames.

How to transfer good practices in integrated care internationally: From self-assessment to knowledge transfer and improvement in care

The challenge of an ageing population is faced by many regions and countries in Europe, and integrated care is a recognised solution to it. Increasing the readiness and capacity of regions to be able to implement integrated care is crucial. In Scotland and in the Puglia region of Italy, a knowledge transfer exercise has been undertaken using the Scirocco model to do just that. 

The Patient Experience of Integrated Care Scale: A Validation Study among Patients with Chronic Conditions Seen in Primary Care.

Valid and comprehensive instruments to measure integrated care are required to capture patient experience and improve quality of patient care. This study aimed to validate the Patient Experience of Integrated Care Scale (PEICS), among patients with chronic conditions seen in primary care.

Understanding inter-organizational trust among integrated care service provider networks: A perspective on organizational asymmetries

The objective was to explore the factors that influence trust among the integrated healthcare service provider network in the context of seeking combined health and care services in the UK.
Their findings reveal that trust among integrated care service provider networks is influenced by the following factors on various asymmetries: 1) recognition and knowledge asymmetries among care service partners of each other’s skills, expertise and capabilities; 2) capacity and financial imbalances within the network; and 3) organizational differences in management, culture and attitudes toward change.

Tomorrow’s World: Is Digital Health the Disruptive Innovation that will Drive the Adoption of Integrated Care Systems?

The idea of this study is that disruptive digital innovations can play a significant role in curbing the long-term rise in the costs of health and care, empower and engage service users, and enable better care outcomes and experiences.
In many ways, the strategy has similar objectives to the integrated care movement in the need to design and implement new ways of care delivery. Indeed, the role of information, communication and technology is commonly regarded as one of the essential ingredients in enabling the success of integrated care. It has the most uncommon dual property in this regard. It is simultaneously the grease that allows integrated care systems to operate as smoothly as they can through good communication of information between care professionals and services users, but it is also the glue that binds care systems together.

Project INTEGRATE: Developing a Framework to Guide Design, Implementation and Evaluation of People-centred Integrated Care Processes

People-centred integrated care is an acknowledged approach to improve the quality and effectiveness of health systems in delivering care around people’s needs and preferences. Nevertheless, more guidance on how to effectively design, implement and evaluate the care process of people-centred integrated care services is needed. Under Project INTEGRATE, a framework was developed to guide managers in the assessment, transformation and delivery of these health service innovations.

International Summer School Integrated Care (ISSIC)

Integrated care is gradually moving out of its niche and into the focus of decision makers, clinicians and managers around the world. This has also spiked interest in how theories, concepts and components of integrated care can be operationalized and successfully implemented in practice. While there is now sufficient evidence available to support the introduction of integrated care in principle, still many question marks remain around the contextualization and evaluation of such initiatives. In addition, the move from disease-focused to population management approaches including active participation of patients and communities further adds to the complexities. This year’s summer school will discuss all of these challenges with leaders in this field whilst also introducing participants to a new module on leadership and managing change.

Citizens as Active Participants in Integrated Care: Challenging the Field’s Dominant Paradigms

Policy makers, practitioners and academics often claim that care users and other citizens should be ‘at the center’ of care integration pursuits. Nonetheless, the field of integrated care tends to approach these constituents as passive recipients of professional and managerial efforts. This paper critically reflects on this discrepancy, which, it contend, indicates both a key objective and an ongoing challenge of care integration;  the need to reconcile the professional, organizational and institutional frameworks by which care work is structured with  the diversity and diffuseness that is inherent to pursuits of active user and citizen participation. 

A Realist Evaluation of Local Networks Designed to Achieve More Integrated Care

Not surprisingly given their multi-component nature, initiatives to improve integrated care often evolve to find the best way to bring about change. This paper provides an example of how an evaluation evolved alongside such an initiative designed to better integrate care across primary, community and hospital services in South Auckland, New Zealand.

APIC2 – 2nd Asia Pacific Conference on Integrated Care

The 2nd Asia Pacific Conference on Integrated Care will take place in Melbourne, Australia, from 11-13 November 2019. With the overarching theme ‘Achieving better value for people and populations’ the conference is a partnership of The University of Newcastle, Centre for Rural & Remote Mental Health, Children’s Health Queensland,Central Coast Local Health District, The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association and Health Justice Australia. The conference will bring together researchers, clinicians and managers from around the world who are engaged in the design and delivery of integrated health and social care. Call for papers announced shortly.

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis of Integrated Care Webinar – SELFIE Project

Professionals are increasingly keen to assess the effects of integrated care initiatives and payers and policy makers are keen to ensure that they allocate scarce resources only to services that have proven value for money. When evaluating the added value of complex interventions such as integrated care initiatives, we need to adopt a broad, inclusive method of evaluation and a holistic, person-centered understanding of ‘value’. This is possible with Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). MCDA is a method to improve transparency of decision-making that makes the impact that multiple criteria have on a decision, and their relative importance explicit. It is particularly suited for interventions where multiple, sometimes conflicting, criteria play a role, and the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders about the importance of decision-criteria need to be taken into account. In this webinar prof.dr. Maureen Rutten-van Mölken of the Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management of the Erasmus ...

Highlights from ICIC19 in San Sebastian

The 19th International Conference on Integrated Care took place from 1-3 April 2019 in San Sebastian and was attended by 1400 delegates representing 60 countries.

With the overarching theme ‘Evaluating and implement models of integrated people-centred services’, the conference is a partnership of OSAKIDETZA – Basque Health Service, Bioef, Ministry for Health of the Basque Government the City Council of Donostia-San Sebastian and the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. The conference brought together researchers, clinicians and managers from around the world who are engaged in the design and delivery of integrated health and social care.

19th International Conference on Integrated Care (ICIC19) Highlights from Foundation for Integrated Care on Vimeo.

To watch the video

Using the Project INTEGRATE Framework in Practice in Central Coast, Australia

Integrated care implies sustained change in complex systems and progress is not always linear or easy to assess. The Central Coast integrated Care Program (CCICP) was planned as a ten-year place-based system change. This paper reports the first formative evaluation to provide a detailed description of the implementation of the CCICP, after two years of activity, and the current progress towards integrated care.

Reconceptualising Person-Centered Service Models as Social Ecology Networks in Supporting Integrated Care

Efforts to address problems such as mental health, poverty, social exclusion, and chronic disease have often proven resistant to traditional policies or interventions. This paper takes up the challenge and present a pioneering new method of analysis in drawing on theoretical and methodological extensions of two prominent approaches, namely, social network analysis and developmental social ecology. Considered in combination, these two seemingly disparate approaches frame a powerful new way of thinking about person-centred care, as well as offer a methodologically more rigorous set of analytical tools. The conceptual model developed from this combination offers to bridge the apparent disconnect between service integration levels and patient needs in such a way as to direct optimal effort to interventions at the individual level and to provide a new innovative approach to the delivery of integrated care.

Clinical leadership and integrated primary care: A systematic literature review

As numbers of chronically ill patients with complex healthcare needs are increasing, primary care professionals will be challenged to deliver integrated care. Integrated care is about ‘delivering seamless care for patients with complex long-term problems cutting across multiple services, providers and settings.
Leaders are needed to address healthcare changes essential for implementation of integrated primary care. What kind of leadership this needs, which professionals should fulfil this role and how these leaders can be supported remains unclear.

ICIC20 – 20th International Conference on Integrated Care (Virtual Edition)

The 20th International Conference on Integrated Care (ICIC20) will take place virtually, the dates 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th September 2020.

The conference will build on themes from previous years and in particular would like to include in this year's programme papers that are focusing on the following areas:

• Meeting the challenges of integrated care in early development, childhood and transitional care in adolescents
• Integrated community care approaches for better management of diseases with a stigmatizing effect, including for example mental health and addiction issues 
• Better managing the care of vulnerable populations including for example war veterans, and preventing isolation and loneliness 
• Integrating survivorship, caring for carers, palliative and end-of-life care 
• Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital tools in the people-centred integrated care

20th International Conference on Integrated Care (ICIC20)

In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions in place, we regretfully inform you that the 20th International Conference on Integrated Care in Croatia, scheduled for 27 – 29 April 2020, cannot go ahead as planned. The conference has NOT been cancelled and will take place later this year when we understand when attendees will be in a better position to participate. IFIC are currently working with our hosts on an alternative solution and will be making an announcement in the comings weeks. We are mindful of those working at the frontline and in the management of health and care systems right now and they must be our first priority. We are committed to delivering the conference and we appreciate your patience whilst we work on finalising details. (International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC)).

The 20th International Conference on Integrated Care (ICIC20) will take place in Sibenik, Croatia ...

Improving Integrated Care: Can Implementation Science Unlock the ‘Black Box’ of Complexities?

In a previous IJIC editorial they reflected on the fact that we have yet to make any significant breakthrough to understand the implementation and sustainability of complex service innovations that so characterise the development of integrated care programmes [1]. Without such knowledge we might be able to explain the core building blocks of integrated care systems, but we cannot adequately explain the intricacies of effective implementation nor fully understand the causes of the outcomes we observe. This article show how this is not simply a methodological problem but reflects a more deep-rooted challenge in the lack of value that is placed both in the commissioning of such research and the findings that are produced.

Welcome to the re-designed IC4P web platform

IntegratedCare4people.org was launched in May 2016 to support the implementation of the WHO Framework on integrated people-centred health services (IPCHS) that was approved by the World Health Assembly just a few days before. In a nutshell, the Framework promotes cross-cutting collaboration and integration across sectors, organizations, health care settings, providers and users for improving quality, responsive, efficient and resilient care. Specifically, IntegratedCare4People.org was established to stimulate the generation, translation, dissemination and exchange of knowledge on successful models of service delivery and best practices to facilitate the adaptation of the WHO IPCHS Framework at the regional and country-level.

Nowadays, the web is a global network that supports knowledge exchange and interaction among stakeholders, including health and social managers, practitioners and policy-makers. During these years, the web has gathered over 60 successful case studies and more than 900 resources have been added in the form of publications, multimedia, resources or ...

Connected Health Services: Framework for an Impact Assessment

Connected health (CH), as a new paradigm, manages individual and community health in a holistic manner by leveraging a variety of technologies and has the potential for the incorporation of telehealth and integrated care services, covering the whole spectrum of health-related services addressing healthy subjects and chronic patients. The reorganization of services around the person or citizen has been expected to bring high impact in the health care domain. There are a series of concerns (eg, contextual factors influencing the impact of care models, the cost savings associated with CH solutions, and the sustainability of the CH ecosystem) that should be better addressed for CH technologies to reach stakeholders more successfully. Overall, there is a need to effectively establish an understanding of the concepts of CH impact. As services based on CH technologies go beyond standard clinical interventions and assessments of medical devices or medical treatments, the need for standardization ...

Integrated care for older people (ICOPE) implementation framework: guidance for systems and services

Alongside supporting community-level services, the Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) approach helps broader health and social care systems effectively respond to the diverse and complex needs of older people. The ICOPE Implementation Framework provides guidance for policy makers and programme managers to concretely assess and measure the capacity of services and systems to deliver integrated care at the community level.

The ICOPE Implementation Framework provides a score card to help assess the overall capacity of health and social care services and systems to deliver integrated care in community settings and support the development of ICOPE implementation action plans. There are 19 actions needed to implement ICOPE on the services level (meso) and systems level (macro). The scoring process provides an evidence-based means of highlighting areas for improvement as well as establishing concrete measures of future improvements.

Mobile Health for Ageing (mAgeing)

Health information, advice, and reminders delivered through mobile phones can encourage healthy behaviors and help older people to improve and maintain their intrinsic capacity. The WHO mobile health for Ageing (mAgeing) programme has been developed as one of the tools to support the implementation of WHO guidelines on community-level interventions to manage declines in intrinsic capacity – also known as the ICOPE Guidelines. The mAgeing programme can support routine care offered by health care professionals by supporting self-care and self-management.

The newly published Handbook helps countries develop, run, monitor, and evaluate the mAgeing programme within their own contexts, using basic technology common to most mobile phones.

The evolution of family-centered care: From supporting parent-delivered interventions to a model of family integrated care

There is increasing recognition that parents play a critical role in promoting the health outcomes of low birthweight and preterm infants. Despite a large body of literature on interventions and models to support family engagement in infant care, parent involvement in the delivery of care for such infants is still restricted in many neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). This article proposes a taxonomy for classifying parent-focused NICU interventions and parent-partnered care models to aid researchers, clinical teams, and health systems to evaluate existing and future approaches to care. The proposed framework has three levels: interventions to support parents, parent-delivered interventions, and multidimensional models of NICU care that explicitly incorporate parents and partners in the care of their preterm or low birthweight infant. 

Integrating services for impact and sustainability: a proof-of-concept project in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Integration of services in primary health care settings can provide mother/baby pairs with all required services at one visit. This study aimed to evaluate a proof of concept, quality improvement (QI) intervention to strengthen well-child service provision and integration with maternal health services in five rural clinics in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

WHO launches an innovative package of tools to support person-centred and integrated care for older people

On the International Day of the Older Person (1st October) the World Health Organization (WHO) released a package of tools to support the implementation of the Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) approach.

ICOPE, based on the WHO Framework on integrated people-centred health services, has been developed in the context of populations around the world ageing rapidly. It enables health and long-term care systems-and the services within them-to respond optimally to the unique, varied and often complex needs of older people.

The package of tools includes: the ICOPE Implementation Framework (guidance for policy makers and programme managers to assess and measure the capacity of services and systems to deliver integrated care at the community level); the ICOPE Handbook, which describes practical care pathways to detect declines in intrinsic capacity and develop personalised care plans; and the ICOPE handbook App, which helps implement ICOPE in community care settings.

Access ICOPE tools ...

Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE)

How to adapt person-centered health services to ageing populations?

Every older person, everywhere, should have access to high quality and person-centred health services. That's why the World Health Organization has published guidelines on Integrated Care for Older People.

Learn more here: https://www.who.int/ageing/health-systems/icope/en/ and here: https://www.who.int/ageing/publications/guidelines-icope/en/

Populations around the world are rapidly ageing. It will increase demand for primary health care and long-term care, require a larger and better trained health workforce and intensify the need for age-friendly environments. These investments can enable the many contributions of older people – whether it be within their family, to their local community or to society more broadly. Universal health coverage for older people means quality health services that are integrated and person-centered.

Societies that adapt to this changing demographic and invest in Healthy Ageing can enable individuals to live both longer and healthier lives and for societies to ...

Where are social workers co-located with primary care physicians?

Social workers are increasingly working in primary care clinics that provide Integrated Behavioral Healthcare (IBH) in which a patient’s physical, behavioral, and social determinants of health are addressed on a collaborative team. Co-location, where care is housed in the same physical space, is a key element of IBH. Yet, little is known about the rate of social workers co-located with primary care physicians (PCPs). This study serves as a benchmark of the growth of IBH and continued monitoring of co-location is needed to ensure social work workforce planning and training are aligned with changing models of care. Further, identifying mechanisms to support social work education, current providers, and health systems to increase IBH implementation is greatly needed.

Integrated care for healthcare sustainability for patients living with rare diseases

The increasingly complex and multidimensional care request, combined with the presence of increasingly aware and demanding patients, accentuates the need for new strategies to preserve health systems economic sustainability. Therefore, integration mechanisms reveal an essential condition for ensuring continuity of care. The paper reviews the main literature available on the integration of heal services and relates it to rare diseases.

The literature identifies several system levers for the effective design and implementation of integrated care frameworks, namely: political support and commitment, governance, stakeholder engagement, organisational change, leadership, collaboration and trust, workforce education and training, patient empowerment, financing and incentives, ICT infrastructure and solutions, monitoring and evaluation system.

Model for integrated care for chronic disease in the Australian context: Western Sydney Integrated Care Program.

The aim of this study was to describe the implementation of a model of integrated care for chronic disease in Western Sydney. This model was established on the basis of a partnership between the Local Health District and the Primary Health Network.

Integrated care: a definition from the perspective of the four quality paradigms

The purpose of this paper is to support the ongoing dialogue and shed light on the different views on integrated care. An overarching definition of integrated care is proposed combining the ways of thinking of the four quality paradigms the authors identify. The idea of epistemic fluency offers a way-out of ongoing discussions about “what integration is”.

A 10 Step Framework to Implement Integrated Care for Older Persons

An aging population, whose multi-morbidities and risk of frailty increase with age results in significant health and social care consumption. Increasing complexity amplifies fragmentation of care and results in sub optimal care outcomes. There is growing evidence base supporting effective service responses for older persons. These typically include multidisciplinary, community based teams providing services in or near to the older person’s home (the ‘what’). However, examples of systemic implementation are confined to smaller regions notably in Catalonia (Spain), Scotland and Singapore. This reflects the fact that the implementation of integrated care is problematic at scale. The need to attend to methods that support high autonomy professionals tasked with local implementation (the ‘who’) is a neglected area. This paper proposes a framework to implementing integrated care for older persons. In addition, it offers some initial empirical evidence that this approach has utility among managers and clinicians. In doing so seeks ...

Digital Health Transformation of Integrated Care in Europe: Overarching Analysis of 17 Integrated Care Programs

Digital health tools comprise a wide range of technologies to support health processes. The potential of these technologies to effectively support health care transformation is widely accepted. However, wide scale implementation is uneven among countries and regions. Identification of common factors facilitating and hampering the implementation process may be useful for future policy recommendations.

The aim of this study was to analyze the implementation of digital health tools to support health care and social care services, as well as to facilitate the longitudinal assessment of these services, in 17 selected integrated chronic care (ICC) programs from 8 European countries.

Person-centred, integrated and pro-active care for multi-morbid elderly with advanced care needs: a propensity score-matched controlled trial

Person-centred care (PCC) focusing on personalised goals and care plans derived from “What matters to you?” has an impact on single disease outcomes, but studies on multi-morbid elderly are lacking. Furthermore, the combination of PCC, Integrated Care (IC) and Pro-active care are widely recognised as desirable for multi-morbid elderly, yet previous studies focus on single components only, leaving synergies unexplored. The effect of a synergistic intervention, which implements 1) Person-centred goal-oriented care driven by “What matters to you?” with 2) IC and 3) pro-active care is unknown.

Exploring nurse navigators’ contribution to integrated care: a qualitative study

This paper examines nurse navigation as a model of integrated care operating across primary and secondary healthcare settings. A two-phase qualitative study involving a focus group with seven nurse navigators (NNs) to explore their understandings and perceptions of the role, followed by in-depth interviews with three NNs to examine current practice, was undertaken in Queensland, Australia.

Integrated care systems in the English NHS: a critical view

The intriguing evolution of health policy in recent years has implications for all parts of the health system. With the UK falling behind most high-income countries on many measures of child health and growing evidence of a worrying health gap between UK children in deprived and affluent areas, paediatricians and others working in child health will want to remain abreast of the broader policy backdrop even where child health has not been privileged in policymaking. While the 2012 Health and Social Care Act reinforced the fragmentation of the service through multiple providers in competition with one another, subsequent policy promises local collaboration and joint working. This article traces this evolution and asks what it means.

Integrated care workforce development: university-community collaboration

Behavioral health workforce shortages to provide quality care services for children, adolescents, and transitional age youth are well established. This paper highlights the workforce shortage and the need to infuse interprofessional education to engage in integrated care for children, adolescents and transitional age youth with behavioral health needs. 

The spirit of the declaration of Astana 

In 1978, a pivotal conference was held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, bringing together health experts and world leaders to commit to health for all. The Declaration of Alma-Ata, endorsed at that conference, formed the foundation for the last 40 years of global primary health care efforts.

Multiple Perspectives Analysis of the Implementation of an Integrated Care Model for Older Adults in Quebec

Integrated care models for older adults are increasingly utilised in healthcare systems to overcome fragmentations. Several groups of stakeholders are involved in the implementation of integrated care. The aim of this study is to identify the main concerns, convergences and divergences in perspectives of stakeholders involved in the implementation of a centralised system-wide integrated care model for older adults in Quebec.

Implementing Integrated Community-Based Primary Healthcare: Applying the iCoach-Approach to Case Selection to Denmark

The iCoach approach to case selection focuses on innovative models of community-based primary healthcare (CBPHC) and their contexts. The aim of this study was to assess the possibilities and limitations of the approach based on Denmark, which differs in significant ways from the jurisdictions initially included.

Designing and Implementing Integrated Care Workshop

IFIC Ireland in partnership with the Health and Social Care Board of Northern Ireland (HSCBNI) and the Health Service Executive (HSE) Ireland will host a half-day workshop for academics, researchers, managers, clinicians, policy makers, users and carers of health and social care services across the island of Ireland. The workshop will be chaired by IFIC Ireland’s Chairperson and Director of Integrated Care HSCBNI, Dr. Sloan Harper.

Integrated care for the inhabitants of the city Leuven: Protocol of the ZORGZAAM Leuven integrated care project

In Flanders, the prevalence of chronic diseases is high and still increasing partially due to aging of the population and partially due to other reasons like surviving acute diseases or cancer. The aim of the Zorgzaam Leuven project is to test the impact of the implementation of a complex intervention based on the principles of integrated care for a well defined population of approximately 100.000 inhabitants in Belgium.

Government leadership that supports community-lead integrated care: An analysis of advances and missteps

Integrated care that substantively impacts population health as well as provides quality care requires buy-in, engagement and commitment over time by a plethora of  government and community groups. There is considerable evidence of the complexity of care models that work such that long term commitment is required to truly impact health. These days, beyond work opportunities, most municipal government and community leaders realise that good quality health services are critical to retaining and recruiting residents, especially noteworthy as an issue in rural communities.  How do places manage bottom-up, top-down tensions as politics and control issues intervene across differrent levels of government? What sort of governmental leadership inspires community engagement versus chronic frustration?

From self-assessment to knowledge transfer and improvement in integrated care: How to engage voluntary sector in the provision of integrated care?

Integrated care is a recognised solution to address the challenge of ageing population. Hence, it is important to commit to opportunities that increase the readiness and capacity of regions to implement integrated care. Knowledge transfer has been greatly recognised as an effective enabler to access existing evidence and learning on integrated care. It encompasses a very broad range of activities to support mutually beneficial collaborations between the interested stakeholders. 

Families as Partners: Co-design of a localised model of care for children with medical complexity living in rural Australia and evaluation using the Paediatric Integrated Care Survey (PICS)

The number of children with medical complexity (CMC) residing in regional Australia is growing, challenging the health system to provide equitable care. Families of CMC experience problems in accessing appropriate care locally and they have high out-of-pocket costs and family disruptions because of long travel distances to access care in metropolitan paediatric hospitals.  The Murrumbidgee Local Health District (MLHD) in collaboration with the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN) partnered with families and local services to co-design a Model of Care (MoC) which better reflects the needs of CMC, their families and local services. The MoC was co-designed with families, local healthcare providers and the tertiary paediatric network.

Partnership, Person-Centredness in Health Care

Person-centred care is an emerging concept in health care. Many people ask what is new about it, and as a matter of fact many health care professionals believe that they work in a person-centred way already. But shifting to a person-centred care practice often involves a profound change in culture and structure, and the key is a different approach in seeing the patient as a partner. The main thing is about being able to listen. Being able to listen to the patient and co-create a care plan; to create a partnership in health care.

The University of Gothenburg Centre for Person-centred Care - GPCC, performs research, education and innovation in person-centred care. Many of the centre’s projects are performed in partnership with Sahlgrenska University Hospital, one of the biggest in Europe, which is closely linked to the University via the The Sahlgrenska Academy.

This short film sets the scene by ...

Towards Integrated People-centered Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Care in Mali

The World Health Organization (WHO), through its Framework on integrated people-centred health services adopted by Member States in 2016, has called for a fundamental shift in the way health services are funded, managed, and delivered.

In Mali, the USAID Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) Project has been working with the Ministry of Health since 2013 to contribute to reducing maternal, neonatal, and child mortality and morbidity. As part of ASSIST’s larger partnership with WHO to contribute to the development of IPCHS in different contexts and settings to promote learning, the project proposed to conduct a pilot project in Mali to assess the promotion of people-centered approaches in clinical consultations by health providers during pregnancy and delivery at peripheral health centers.

Launch of online training in person-centred care

A free online training course in person-centred care in English is now being launched. The purpose is to give health care sector staff tools to help themselves to start working in a person-centred way.

Globally there is a strong trend towards more person-centred care, involving a partnership between the patient, the patient’s family and the care professionals. Person-centred care means listening to the patient’s own narrative and using it alongside other examinations and tests as the basis for a health plan.

Irma Lindström Kjellberg, Senior Adviser at the University of Gothenburg Centre för Person-Centred Care, GPCC in Sweden, who has created the course, says: “This is about the patient’s role as a partner, how staff and patients make agreements, and how to document them in a health plan” 

The Development of a Logic Model to Guide the Planning and Evaluation of a Navigation Center for Children and Youth with Complex Care Needs

Most systems across health settings and sectors are not well integrated and do not provide the needed supports, resources, or access caregivers and families require to properly care for their child with complex care needs (CCNs). NaviCare/SoinsNavi is a research-based navigation center aimed to help facilitate more convenient and integrated care to support the needs of children, youth, and their families using a patient navigator to offer personalized family-centered care

Partnership and accountability in the era of integrated care: a tale from England

In England, the 2012 Health and Social Care Act was heralded to be among the most significant changes in policy for the National Health Service (NHS) since its inception in 1948. Yet a key theme of the policy, namely the intensification of competition in service provision, has not fully materialised.
The 2014 Five Year Forward View outlined visions for a more integrated health and care system in England. Subsequent guidance introduced new organisational forms, such as the so-called Sustainability and Transformation Plans and integrated care systems

National Forum on Integrated Care in Ireland (NFICI) 2020

In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions in place, we regretfully inform you that the National Forum on Integrated Care in Ireland has been cancelled.

IFIC Ireland in association with the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC), the UCD Centre for Integrated Care and Improvement Studies (UCD CICIS) and the Health Service Executive (HSE) Ireland presents “Transforming Health and Social Care in Ireland: Delivering Lifelong People-centred Care” on Wednesday, 6 May 2020 in O’Reilly Hall University College Dublin. The forum is attended by up to 300 delegates from across Ireland and Northern Ireland and includes Health and Social Care Services Mangers, Clinicians and System leads, Academics leading in the field of integrated care, and a wide range of not for profit patient representative organisations and private sector providers of care services.

Towards a theoretical framework for Integrated Team Leadership (IgTL)

This study presents a framework for the leadership of integrated, interprofessional health, and social-care teams (IgTs) based on a previous literature review and a qualitative study. The theoretical framework for Integrated Team Leadership (IgTL) is based on contributions from 15 professional and nonprofessional staff, in 8 community teams in the United Kingdom. Participants shared their perceptions of IgT’s good practice in relation to patient outcomes. There were two clear elements, Person-focused and Task-focused leadership behaviors with particular emphasis on the facilitation of shared professional practices. Person-focused leadership skills include: inspiring and motivating; walking the talk; change and innovation; consideration; empowerment, teambuilding and team maintenance; and emotional intelligence.

Implementation of Off-Site Integrated Care for Children: A Scoping Review.

As an alternative to co-located integrated care, off-site integration (partnerships between primary care and non-embedded specialty mental health providers) can address the growing need for pediatric mental health services. The goal of this study was to review the existing literature on implementing off-site pediatric integrated care

Mapping Evidence of Patients’ Experiences in Integrated Care Settings: A Protocol for a Scoping Review

Integrated care (IC) models have emerged to address gaps in care for individuals with complex healthcare needs. Although the clinical and cost-effectiveness of IC models are well-established, the understanding of whether IC models facilitate a patient-centred care experience from the patients’ perspective is not well understood. This scoping review aims to comprehensively map the literature to provide a broad overview of patients’ experiences in IC settings with a focus on the experiences of complex patients with comorbid mental and physical illnesses. It also aims to describe current gaps identified in the literature in our understanding of aspects of care that are often unrecognised.

Unknown makes unloved—A case study on improving integrated health and social care in the Netherlands using a participatory approach

Many initiatives integrating health and social care have been implemented in order to provide adequate care and support to older people living at home. Further development of existing initiatives requires iterative processes of developing, implementing and evaluating improvements to current practice. This case study provides insight into the process of improving an existing integrated care initiative in the Netherlands. Using a participatory approach, researchers and local stakeholders collaborated to develop and implement activities to further improve collaboration between health and social care professionals. Improvement activities included interprofessional meetings focussing on reflection and mutual learning and workplace visits. Researchers evaluated the improvement process, using data triangulation of multiple qualitative and quantitative data sources. 

Comparative case studies in integrated care implementation from across the globe: a quest for action

Integrated care is the coordination of general and behavioral health and is a highly promising and practical approach to improving healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. While there is growing interest and investment in integrated care implementation internationally, there are no formal guidelines for integrated care implementation applicable to diverse healthcare systems. Furthermore, there is a complex interplay of factors at multiple levels of influence that are necessary for successful implementation of integrated care in health systems

A Collaborative Platform for Management of Chronic Diseases via Guideline-Driven Individualized Care Plans

Older age is associated with an increased accumulation of multiple chronic conditions. The clinical management of patients suffering from multiple chronic conditions is very complex, disconnected and time-consuming with the traditional care settings. Integrated care is a means to address the growing demand for improved patient experience and health outcomes of multimorbid and long-term care patients. Care planning is a prevalent approach of integrated care, where the aim is to deliver more personalized and targeted care creating shared care plans by clearly articulating the role of each provider and patient in the care process. This paper presents a method and corresponding implementation of a semi-automatic care plan management tool, integrated with clinical decision support services which can seamlessly access and assess the electronic health records (EHRs) of the patient in comparison with evidence based clinical guidelines to suggest personalized recommendations for goals and interventions to be added to the individualized ...

Towards integrated care systems (ICSs) Leading for integrated care

Leading across integrated care systems and integrated care partnerships (ICPs) requires a range of skills. These include being able to walk in other people’s shoes; having a constancy of purpose while retaining flexibility; and building the evidence base for change as a key tool for persuading the unconvinced of the need to redesign our model of care delivery.

Building on the recent report, "Leading for integrated care", this event will provide insights into the different leadership skills and behaviours needed to successfully secure more integrated care.

You will be able to hear from a range of different speakers from across the UK about how individual leaders from local government and the NHS are working in partnership to redesign services and in some instances place a greater emphasis on wellness.

Suitable Scales; Rethinking Scale for Innovative Integrated Care Governance

For organising person centered care, an important issue is how to deal with scale. This addresses what to organise on what level (in the neighbourhood, local, in the region, or national). With the increasing complexity of organising integrated care in networks, scale issues are an ingredient of integrated care governance. However, there is a lack of empirical studies that treat scale as an object of study in itself. Scale is an outcome of the interplay between many different interests, values and perceptions of people involved in the broader social and political processes. Five factors for suitable scales are discussed, emphasising the relevance for integrated care governance. These factors show, that the classical micro-meso-macro thinking oversimplify reality and more knowledge about suitable scales is required.

Integrating health care in Australia: a qualitative evaluation

With aging populations, a growing prevalence of chronic illnesses, higher expectations for quality care and rising costs within limited health budgets, integration of healthcare is seen as a solution to these challenges. Integrated healthcare aims to overcome barriers between primary and secondary care and other disconnected patient services to improve access, continuity and quality of care. Many people in Australia are admitted to hospital for chronic illnesses that could be prevented or managed in the community. Western Sydney has high rates of diabetes, heart and respiratory diseases and the NSW State Ministry of Health has implemented key strategies through the Western Sydney Integrated Care Program (WSICP) to enhance primary care and the outcomes and experiences of patients with these illnesses.

Maturity Model in Practice – SCIROCCO self-assessment tool

The SCIROCCO self-assessment tool is an online self- assessment tool with an objective to assess a region’s readiness for integrated care. It builds on the conceptual Maturity Model for Integrated Care developed by the B3 Action Group on Integrated Care of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing.

• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of their regional context for integrated care  and inform national, regional and local policy-makers about potential areas of  improvement;
• Adopt and transfer integrated care good practices by identifying their maturity  requirements and requirements for the potential transferability and scaling-up;
• Facilitate multi-stakeholder dialogues on progress towards the implementation and  delivery of integrated care;
• Facilitate twinning and coaching activities that help regions and organisations to better  understand the local conditions that enable the successful deployment of integrated care

The SCIROCCO tool can be accessed online by using the following link ...

SCIROCCO Exchange - Capacity-building support for integrated care

Integrated care is a recognised solution to address the challenge of ageing population. Hence, it is important to commit to opportunities that increase the readiness and capacity of regions to implement integrated care. Knowledge transfer has been greatly recognised as an effective enabler of capacity-building support. However, effective knowledge transfer and capacity-building support requires dedicated support and infrastructure to ensure that the flow of appropriate information and knowledge between adopting and transferring entities is tailored to the local context and maturity of the particular healthcare system seeking the support. This is a precondition to help health and care authorities to build their capacity for the successful transition towards integrated care.

Supporting integrated care in practice: Perceptions of a national support programme for the development of New Care Models in England

This paper investigates the perceptions of key informants on a national support programme for the development of New Care Models in England (2015/16 to 2017/18). It focuses on the perceived facilitators and barriers affecting the development and implementation of the New Care Models programme and offers some insight into the role of national level support in enabling local integration initiatives. Besides the paper demonstrates that analysis of facilitators and challenges with respect to the national support of implementation of integrated care initiatives should move beyond the focus on separate influencing factors and address the tensions that the complex interplay among these factors create.

Integrated care pilots in England revisited

The purpose of this paper is to explore the outcomes identified by the evaluation of the national programme of integrated care pilots (ICPs) in England in the context of wider policies designed to deliver integrated care and to consider the challenges presented to policy makers and evaluators in distilling usable insights to promote effective policy.

Also, this paper considers why evaluation findings appear limited in their impact on policy in the field of integrated care. Views as to how evaluation might be undertaken so that it generates actionable insights are advanced.

Can Organisational Culture of Teams Be a Lever for Integrating Care? An Exploratory Study

Organisational culture is believed to be an important facilitator for better integrated care, yet how organisational culture impacts integrated care remains underspecified. In an exploratory study, we assessed the relationship between organisational culture in primary care centres as perceived by primary care teams and patient-perceived levels of integrated care

Levers for integrating social work into primary healthcare networks in Austria

The integrated healthcare of patients with support needs in primary healthcare in Austria has insufficient structural and procedural features in terms of the quality and security of care. The aim is therefore to develop solution- and patient-oriented services that take into account both the patients’ requirements as well as the medical, nursing, therapeutic and economic perspectives. 

Providing person-centred care for people with multiple chronic conditions: protocol for a qualitative study incorporating client and staff perspectives

Chronic conditions are associated with over one-third of potentially avoidable hospitalisations. Integrated care programmes aim to help people with chronic conditions to self-manage their health, thus avoiding hospital admissions. While founded on principles of person-centred care, the experiences of people with multiple chronic conditions in integrated care programmes are not widely known. This study explores how person-centred care is incorporated into an integrated care programme for people with multiple chronic conditions.

Case Management - Making a Unique Contribution to Integrated Care

The International Foundation for Integrated Care Australia (IFIC Australia) is going to introduce their second Webinar series. The core mission of IFIC Australia is to develop capacity and capabilities in Australia and the Asia Pacific Region in the design and delivery of integrated care. IFIC Australia seeks to achieve this by providing a platform to develop and exchange ideas and promote activities in the region in keeping with IFIC’s mission.

In this case, this webinar will explain case management as a care coordination strategy for individuals. Quality analysis and macro to micro practice issues are explored through examples.

Towards a values framework for integrated health services: an international Delphi study

In order to organize person-centered health services for a growing number of people with multiple complex health and social care needs, a shift from fragmented to integrated health services delivery has to take place. For the organization of governance in integrated health services, it is important to better understand the underlying factors that drive collaboration, decision-making and behavior between individuals and organizations.

Challenges in turning a great idea into great health policy: the case of integrated care

In the organization of health care and health care systems, there is an increasing trend towards integrated care. Policy-makers from different countries are creating policies intended to promote cooperation and collaboration between health care providers, while facilitating the integration of different health care services. Hopes are high, as such collaboration and integration of care are believed to save resources and improve quality. However, policy-makers are likely to encounter various challenges and limitations when attempting to turn these great ideas into effective policies. In this paper, we look into these challenges.

Integrated Care for Older People and the Implementation in the INSPIRE Study

The World Health Organization has published the Integrated Care for Older People, ICOPE handbook Guidance on person-centred assessment and pathways in primary care. This is an integrated individual care tool focused on the individual and healthy ageing. The ICOPE tool proposes step by step, a screening, a fine assessment, the development of a personalized care plan, its implementation and follow up and finally the consideration of the caregivers and community. The new Geroscience field is focusing on preventing age-related diseases, and should now investigate with the ICOPE tool the optimal maintenance of intrinsic capacity (IC) through mobility, cognition, psychology, vitality, hearing and vision. This article aims to present this new tool and to presents its innovative implementation at the Toulouse University Hospital through the INSPIRE study.

Can health and social care integration make long-term progress? Findings from key informant surveys of the integration Pioneers in England

All areas in England are expected by National Health Service (NHS) England to develop integrated care systems (ICSs) by April 2021. ICSs bring together primary, secondary and community health services, and involve local authorities and the voluntary sector. ICSs build on previous pilots, including the Integrated Care Pioneers in 25 areas from November 2013 to March 2018. This analysis tracks the Pioneers’ self-reported progress, and the facilitators and barriers to improve service coordination over three years, longer than previous evaluations in England. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Addressing safety risks in integrated care programs for older people living at home: a scoping review

Many older people live at home, often with complex and chronic health and social care needs. Integrated care programs are increasingly being implemented as a way to better address these needs. To support older people living at home, it is also essential to maintain their safety. Integrated care programs have the potential to address a wide range of risks and problems that could undermine older people’s ability to live independently at home. The aim of this scoping review is to provide insight into how integrated care programs address safety risks faced by older people living at home - an area that is rather underexplored.

Webinar Series: Care during and beyond the COVID-19 Crisis: Building integrated care as the cornerstone of our new reality