April 21, 2016 Global

Integrated care – taking specialist medical care beyond the hospital walls

The Royal College of Physicians has published in 2016 a document titled “Integrated care -  taking specialist medical care beyond the hospital walls”.

In the first part of this document they are described some of the main topics about integrated care, how it is conceptualize and what it really implies for patients, professionals and for the whole system.

Afterwards, some study cases are shown as examples to go deeper into different dimensions of integrated care such as the need for sustainable models of integrated care, leadership, management and governance or self-management and care.

Finally, the document lists five key areas where ...

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April 20, 2016 Europe

National Framework for Children and Young People’s Continuing Care

This Framework (reviewed) is intended to provide guidance for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) when assessing the needs of children and young people whose complex needs cannot be met by universal or specialist health services. CCGs have a legal responsibility for securing to a reasonable extent the health care which an individual needs, and this guidance is about the process which should be followed for the equitable discharge of that responsibility for children and young people with complex needs. This revision takes account of the new structures of NHS commissioning created by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and the ...

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April 20, 2016 Europe

Inclusion Health: Education and Training for Health Professionals: END of STUDY REPORT

The concept of Inclusion Health is founded on the premise that not all UK citizens have access to the highest standards of healthcare. Meeting the health needs of a small group of socially excluded individuals and their communities remains a challenge. This population has poorer predicted health outcomes and a shorter life expectancy than the average population. The National Inclusion Health programme for England was launched in March 2010 as a cross-government programme led by the Department of Health. It provides a framework for driving improvements in health outcomes for socially excluded groups. The rationale for setting up this framework ...

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April 20, 2016 Europe

Medicines optimisation: the safe and effective use of medicines to enable the best possible outcomes

This guideline offers best practice advice on the care of all people who are using medicines and also those who are receiving suboptimal benefit from medicines, from the point of view of NICE based of the best available evidence.

Medicines prevent, treat or manage many illnesses or conditions and are the most common intervention in healthcare. However, it has been estimated that between 30% and 50% of medicines prescribed for long?term conditions are not taken as intended (World Health Organization 2003). This issue is worsened by the growing number of people with long term conditions (long?term condition is ...

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April 17, 2016 Americas

The Patient-Centered Medical Home’s Impact on Cost and Quality: Annual Review of Evidence, 2014-15

The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is a model of primary care that is patient-centred, comprehensive, coordinated, accessible and committed to quality and safety. In the PCMH, the primary care team coordinates care for patients and guides them in their journeys across the health care system.  In February 2016, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, a not-for-profit membership organization, published a review titled "The Patient-Centered Medical Home's Impact on Cost and Quality", which provides a summary of PCMH cost and utilisation outcomes in the United States. The review includes peer-reviewed studies, state government evaluations, industry reports and independent federal program evaluations ...

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April 4, 2016 Europe

Age UK’s Personalised Integrated Care Programme: where are we now?

Age UK launched its personalised integrated care programme in 2012 in Cornwall. In this post, published in its blog, some data about its evaluation are shown and discussed.

The main objectives of this programme are to improve health and wellbeing of older people by tailoring services to meet their needs, improve the experience and quality of care received, and to reduce unplanned hospital admissions amongst older people with multiple long-term conditions.

The evaluation showed a 31% reduction in all hospital admissions, a 26% reduction in emergency ones, and a 20% improvement in older people’s health and wellbeing. In addition ...

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April 4, 2016 Global

The MDG To SDG Transition: the role of hospitals and integrated primary care.

In 2016, the world will be moving from the Millenium Development Goals (MDG) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Regarding health-related goals, most of the funding in recent years has been focusing on disease-specific programmes and strengthening primary care; nevertheless, public health, health promotion, prevention, and controlling risk factors through a broad range of policy interventions, both within and outside the health sector, must be an important focus in the era of SDGs.

In this post, integrated health services are seen as a main factor to achieve the health-related topics in the SDGs. The author defends not only strong primary ...

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March 30, 2016 Global

Guidelines for reporting of health interventions using mobile phones: mobile health (mHealth) evidence reporting and assessment (mERA) checklist.

The WHO mHealth Technical Evidence Review Group developed the mHealth evidence reporting and assessment (mERA) checklist to improve the reporting of mobile health (mHealth) interventions.The development process for mERA consisted of convening an expert group to recommend an appropriate approach, convening a global expert review panel for checklist development, and pilot testing the checklist. The guiding principle for the development of these criteria was to identify a minimum set of information needed to define what the mHealth intervention is (content), where it is being implemented (context), and how it was implemented (technical features), to support replication of the intervention ...

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March 28, 2016 Global

Universal Health Coverage’s evolving location in the post-2015 development agenda: Key informant perspectives within multilateral and related agencies during the first phase of post-2015 negotiations

In 2001, technocrats from four multilateral organizations selected the Millennium Development Goals mainly from the previous decade of United Nations (UN) summits and conferences. Few accounts are available of that significant yet cloistered synthesis process: none contemporaneous. In contrast, this study examines health’s evolving location in the first-phase of the next iteration of global development goal negotiation for the post-2015 era, through the synchronous perspectives of representatives of key multilateral and related organizations. As part of the Go4Health Project, in-depth interviews were conducted in mid-2013 with 57 professionals working on health and the post-2015 agenda within multilaterals and related ...

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March 18, 2016 Africa Europe Western Pacific Global

Barriers and enablers to integrating maternal and child health services to antenatal care in low and middle income countries

For most women in low and middle income countries (LMIC), antenatal care (ANC) plays a highly important dual role: not only does ANC provide effective interventions to reduce the risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth, it can also serve as a delivery platform for other health services. Particularly in settings where the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), tuberculosis (TB) and malaria is high, integrating services for these conditions with ANC can significantly expand their reach. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) identified integration of ANC with other health programmes as a key strategy for reducing missed ...

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