An Integrated Care Strategy for Pre-schoolers with Suspected Developmental Disorders: The Optimus Co-design Project that has Made it to Regular Care

Implementing Integrated Care in Practice – Learning from MDTs Driving the Integrated Care Programme for Older Persons in Ireland

The importance of multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) as critical implementation drivers emerged from this case study conducted with three pioneer sites implementing integrated care for older persons in Ireland as part of the Integrated Care Programme for Older Persons (ICPOP).

The study describes the practices of MDTs learning to deliver integrated care in service delivery settings, including the framework, resourcing, strategies, challenges and barriers they encounter.

Elderly people, dependency and vulnerability in the coronavirus pandemic: an emergency for a social and health integration

The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (COVID-19) is affecting elderly people worldwide with greater incidence and severity. In Spain, 68% of all coronavirus hospitalizations correspond to those over 60 years of age. This work aims to highlight the evidence about the measures to be implemented through current and future guidelines. The need to prepare for action by implementing international protocols stand out. There is a trend towards biopsychosocial care of elderly people in all settings where they are, adapting care and personalizing decisions on hospital admissions, palliative care, among other criteria, to years adjusted to quality of life, as well as alternatives ...

Conditions for successful interprofessional collaboration in integrated care - Lessons from a primary care setting in Denmark

Increasing demand for interprofessional collaboration in health care settings has led to a greater focus on how conditions influence the success of interprofessional collaboration, but little is known about the magnitude of the interactions between different conditions. This paper aims to examine the relationships of intervention conditions and context conditions at the professional and organisational level and examine how they influence the staff's perceived success of the interprofessional collaboration.

ARIA 2019: An Integrated Care Pathway for Allergic Rhinitis in Portugal

The Allergic Rhinitis and Its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) initiative started more than 20 years ago and has developed and disseminated evidence-based guidelines and projects in the field of allergic rhinitis. This initiative is currently focused on providing patient-centred guidelines that contribute to an integrated care pathway between the various levels of care and take advantage of digital solutions, and the introduction of integrated care pathways in clinical practice has been recommended. In this article we describe the adaptation for Portugal of the ARIA Integrated Care Pathways document. After a brief review of the epidemiology and impact of allergic rhinitis ...

What day is today? Cognitive capacity and the risk of incident dementia in the context of integrated care for older people (ICOPE Step 1)

Based on clinical observations, our objective was to test if the older adults who failed to recall the name of the weekday, or had a higher number of mistakes in the word recall were at higher risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia. Longitudinal data of the Multidomain Alzheimer Preventive Trial (MAPT) was used to retrospectively measure the cognitive capacity according to the ICOPE Step 1 tool. Incident dementia was assessed by two multidisciplinary committees independent from each other. MCI was defined as Clinical Dementia Rating scale CDR = 0.5. Failure to recall the name of the weekday had ...

Learning from the Pandemic to Improve Care for Vulnerable Communities: The Perspectives and Recommendations from the Rare Disease Community

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about health and social care disruptions for millions of people with complex health needs and disabilities, who are amongst the most vulnerable populations. More than ever before, the need for integrated care is pressing, as fragmented health and care systems struggle to face the pandemic and vulnerable individuals are exposed to aggravated health, social and economic hurdles. The implementation of effective integrated care pathways is long due and must build upon the key guidelines being published by experts worldwide. Furthermore, the pandemic is opening the doors for more remote healthcare and care coordination, with both ...

Co-Creating Descriptors and a Definition for Person-Centred Coordinated Health Care: An Action Research Study

The aim of this study was to co-create a definition and generic descriptors for person-centred coordinated care for Ireland generated from service users’ narratives.

An overarching action research approach was used to engage and empower people to tangibly impact health policy and practice. Through focus groups and a qualitative survey, primary data were collected from a national sample of health services users, caregivers and health care service users’ representative groups. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Three major themes were co-produced as essential care elements. These were: ‘My experience of healthcare’, ‘Care that I am confident in’ and ...

How to Ensure Referral and Uptake for COPD Rehabilitation – Part 2: A Case of Integrated Care on How to Translate Findings of Cross- Sectorial Workflow to Improve Cross-Sectorial Rehabilitation

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can greatly benefit from rehabilitation initiatives, but referral to rehabilitation is sparse. Before we initiated activities to ensure hospital referrals for prevention initiatives at the municipality, we investigated referral patterns and relevant factors in the cross-sectorial workflow.

This study aims to ensure referral to municipality COPD rehabilitation, by simplifying the referral procedures, and by facilitating relational coordination across the two health care settings.

Integrated health Services for Children: a qualitative study of family perspectives

There is increasing evidence that integrated care improves child related quality of life and reduces health service use. However, there is limited evidence on family perspectives about the quality of integrated care for children’s services. This study aimed to understand children, young people, and caregivers’ perceptions of a new integrated care service, and to identify essential components of integrated care for children and young people with ongoing conditions.