16th International Conference on Integrated Care on Enabling People-Centred and Integrated Health and Social Care

The International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC), in partnership with PIAISS of the Catalan Government, Hospital Clinic Barcelona (HCB), Forum ITESSS and the Tic Salut Foundation 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 in the 16th International Conference on Integrated Care, that will take place in Barcelona, 23-5 May 2016. 

Early Bird promotion has been EXTENDED to 31 January by entering discount code “EARLYBIRD” in the promotional box and the Deadline for registrations is the 18 May.

If you are interesting in attending the Conference, visit the website for further information: http://integratedcarefoundation.org/events/icic16-16th-international-conference-on-integrated-care

People-centred and integrated health services: an overview of the evidence

This Interim Report accompanies the World Health Organization (WHO) global strategy on people-centred and integrated health services, by presenting some of the evidence on strategies to implement people-centred and integrated health services. It presents a number of case studies and the evidence on the benefits that people-centred and integrated care can bring to people, communities and countries.

The interim WHO global strategy discusses the five strategic directions towards people-centred and integrated health services and looks at the different approaches used to achieve them. It looks at examples from around the world, in differing country contexts, and identifies some models of good practice and lessons learnt. It further considers some of the issues involved in leading and managing change in the health sector, and how to measure success and build learning into the process.

The interim WHO global strategy went throuh global consultations and was reviewed and re-published under the name ...

Framework on integrated, people-centred health services

This Framework proposes five interdependent strategies for health services to become more integrated and people-centred. It calls for reforms to reorient health services, putting individuals, families, carers and communities at their centre, supported by responsive services that better meet their needs and respect their preferences, and that are coordinated both within and beyond the health sector, irrespective of country setting or development status. These reforms also incorporate a human rights approach, enshrining access to health care as a basic right, without distinction of ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability, political belief, and economic or social condition.

This document builds on the interim WHO Strategy on people-centred and integrated health services, published by the WHO in March 2015. It  incorporates the comments and suggestions gathered through a broad stakeholder consultation process: a web based-public consultation open to individuals and organizations (closed October 2015) and regional and Member State consultations (ongoing). The Framework ...

WHO global strategy on people-centred and integrated health services

This interim report, the WHO global strategy on people-centred and integrated health services, presents a compelling case for a people-centred and integrated health services approach, along with a look at the way forward. It is accompanied by the document "People-centred and integrated health services: an overview of the evidence".

How to place citizen's perspective in the centre of public policies.

Placing people in the centre of health system’s design needs to understand what are the people’s perspectives about public policies and what public policies would people prefer. Frequently, public policies aiming to introduce big changes in health systems fail at getting a high acceptance by the citizens.

In this post, published in The Impact Blogs, hosted by the London School of Economics, it is described a framework which aims to align the perspectives of policymakers and citizens, and proposes two mains ways to get to a confluence between these two stakeholders: adjusting the policy frame or trying to influence on citizens’ frame.

The authors of this article applied this framework to a couple of policies, related to support for victims and confidence in the judiciary.

Learning about patients’ experiences of care in their own homes

Patient’s experiences are a main factor in order to design how health care services should work. Many different ways of measuring these experiences have been developed; in this post hosted by the King’s Fund Blog, Jo Maybin explains how they have used face-to-face interviews in patient’s home, what difficulties they have found and what they have been able to investigate thanks to this kind of methodology.

As it is said in the post, patient’s own homes interviews enabled the interviewers to get in contact with external carers, to analyze their point of view in relation to health care coordination and integration, and to identify what aspects should be improved in order to increase patient’s satisfaction with the care provided.

On the other hand, this post lists some of the difficulties found when doing face-to-face interviews, specially in what concerns to the amount of resources or ...

Using patient feedback to drive improvement

Increasing amount of information is being collected from patients after they are discharged in a hospital; this information can be used mainly in three ways: (I) to analyse how care is being performed, (II) to publish data in order to share information with general public and to enhance government’s accountability, and (III) to implement reforms in hospital activities and way of working.

In this post, the author defends the idea that not enough information is being used to make patient experience have actual influence at changing how health care organization work at a local level. Organizational leadership and patient-centered culture are said to be critical to use patient feedback to drive improvement.

The author, Joni Jabal, ends this post urging NHS to use its “NHS inpatient survey” to make NHS become an actual people-centered organization.

Managing multimorbidity: profiles of integrated care approaches targeting people with multiple chronic conditions in Europe

In response to the growing populations of people with multiple chronic deseases, new models of care are currently being developed in European countries to better meet the needs of these people. This paper aims to describe the occurrence and characteristics of various types of ntegrated care practices in European countries that target people with multimorbidity.

Integrated and patient-centred management of Parkinson’s disease: a network model for reshaping chronic neurological care

Chronic neurological diseases are the leading cause of disability globally. Yet, our health-care systems are not designed to meet the needs of many patients with chronic neurological conditions. Care is fragmented with poor interdisciplinary collaboration and lack of timely access to services and therapies. Furthermore, care is typically reactive, and complex problems are managed inadequately because of a scarcity of disease-specific expertise and insufficient use of nonpharmacological interventions. Treatment plans tend to focus on the disease rather than the individual living with it, and patients are often not involved in clinical decision making. By use of Parkinson’s disease as a model condition, this article show an integrated care concept with a patient-centred perspective that includes evidence-based solutions to improve healthcare delivery for people with chronic neurological conditions.

Research in Integrated Care: The Need for More Emergent, People-Centred Approaches

The International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC) recently celebrated its 20^th International Conference (ICIC20) through a virtual event that brought together patients and carers, academics, care professionals, NGOs, policy-makers and industry partners from across the global integrated care community.

The International Journal for Integrated Care (IJIC) used this opportunity to host a workshop on published research in integrated care, specifically to reflect on the quality of existing scientific enquiry. A lively discussion on the current state of integrated care research concluded that there remained significant shortcomings to current methodologies – for example, in their ability to provide the depth of understanding required to support the knowledge needed to best inform policy and practice, particularly when addressing people-centredness.

In part, the debate recognized how the nature of existing research funding, and prevailing attitudes and preferences towards certain research methodologies, were partly to blame (as has been noted by IJIC previously. The ...

Research in Integrated Care: The Need for More Emergent, People-Centred Approaches

The International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC) recently celebrated its 20^th International Conference (ICIC20) through a virtual event that brought together patients and carers, academics, care professionals, NGOs, policy-makers and industry partners from across the global integrated care community. The International Journal for Integrated Care (IJIC) used this opportunity to host a workshop on published research in integrated care, specifically to reflect on the quality of existing scientific enquiry. A lively discussion on the current state of integrated care research concluded that there remained significant shortcomings to current methodologies – for example, in their ability to provide the depth of understanding required to support the knowledge needed to best inform policy and practice, particularly when addressing people-centredness. In part, the debate recognized how the nature of existing research funding, and prevailing attitudes and preferences towards certain research methodologies, were partly to blame (as has been noted by IJIC previously). The ...

International comparisons of the quality and outcomes of integrated care: Findings of the OECD pilot on stroke and chronic heart failure

Across OECD countries, two in three people aged over 65 years live with at least one chronic condition often requiring multiple interactions with different providers, making them more susceptible to poor and fragmented care. This has prompted calls for making health systems more people-centred, capable of delivering high-quality integrated care. Despite promising, mostly local-level, experiences, systems remain fragmented, focused on acute care and unsuitable to solve complex needs. Moreover, assessing and comparing the benefits of integrated care remains difficult given the lack of technically sound, policy-relevant indicators. This report presents the results of the first OECD pilot of a new generation of indicators to support international benchmarking of quality of integrated care. Lessons from the pilot call for further work on:

(1) expanding work on indicator development;

(2) performing policy analysis to understand cross-country variations on governance models and health financing;

(3) upscaling data linkage; and

(4) measuring care fragmentation.