Targeting integrated care to those most likely to need frequent health care: a review of social and clinical risk factors

This rapid review was commissioned by the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI) and the Sax Institute in Australia to examine the evidence concerning social and clinical risk factors which may be significant predictors of both pre-hospital and hospital service utilisation. The context is that the NSW Ministry of Health wishes to develop a NSW approach for risk stratification and patient selection that identifies people who are at risk(s) of poorer health outcome(s), and enable targeted delivery of integrated care to those who will maximally benefit.

Integrated care: easy in theory, harder in practice?

Integrated care (IC) is a term now commonly adopted across the world, which implies a positive attitude towards addressing fragmentation of service provision inside health systems. While the principles of IC are simple, their implementation is more controversial. The ever growing number of IC definitions is related to the increasing domains of applications, which reflect the increasing demand induced by ageing multi-morbid patients. An exhaustive definition of IC should now enclose the coordination of health and social services useful to deliver seamless care across organizational boundaries. The current debate on IC is largely fueled by the modern mismatch between the ...

Integrated Care in Europe: Time to Get it Together?

What are the priorities for the future development of integrated care? A scoping review

“Integrated care” (IC) is an approach to health and social care delivery that aims to prevent problems arising from fragmented care systems. The collective content of the IC literature, whilst valuable, has become extensive and wide-ranging to such a degree that knowing what is most important in IC is a challenge. This study aims to address this issue.

Measurement-based care in integrated health care: A randomized clinical trial

Many suggest that the next step for integrated care is widespread implementation of measurement-based care (MBC). Although the measures most associated with MBC are standardized, no randomized clinical trial has demonstrated their use to improve psychotherapeutic outcomes with embedded behavioral health providers in integrated care. Two evidence-based MBC systems have been studied in a variety of behavioral health environments, but neither system has been investigated in integrated health care. Addressing this gap in the literature, the present study evaluated the use of MBC, specifically the Partners for Change Outcome Management System, in three integrated care sites.

Reform For People: A Joint Vision For Integrating Care

Many of us will be watching closely as the NHS Bill begins its journey through Parliament and will be seeking to ensure that it meets the needs of the people we support. However, while the Bill represents an exciting opportunity, previous NHS reforms have taught us that legislation alone is not enough to improve people’s health and lives. For these reforms to be a success, and make a real difference to people and communities, we need to go further. We need to improve cultures, change behaviours, and capture hearts and minds.

National Voices, Age UK, the Richmond Group of ...

Measuring Older Peoples’ Experiences of Person-Centred Coordinated Care: Experience and Methodological Reflections from Applying a Patient Reported Experience Measure in SUSTAIN

While several evaluation studies on (cost-)effectiveness of integrated care have been conducted in recent years, more insight is deemed necessary into integrated care from the perspective of service users.

In the context of a European project on integrated care for older people living at home (SUSTAIN), this paper shares the experience and methodological reflections from applying a Patient Reported Experience Measure (PREM) on person-centred coordinated care -the P3CEQ- among this population.

A Cross-European Study of Informal Carers’ Needs in the Context of Caring for Older People, and their Experiences with Professionals Working in Integrated Care Settings

Informal carers are increasingly relied on for support by older people and the health and social care systems that serve them. It is therefore important that health and social care professionals are knowledgeable about and responsive to informal carers’ needs.

This study explores informal carers’ own needs within the context of caregiving; and examines, from the informal carers’ perspective, the extent to which professionals assess, understand and are responsive to informal carers’ needs.

Collective Impact Approaches to Promoting Community Health and Wellbeing in a Regional Township: Learnings for Integrated Care

This Perspective Paper explores the challenges of implementing local initiatives guided by the tenets of the Collective Impact (CI) approach. As such, it draws implications of CI for integrated health and social care efforts to improve and sustain health and social outcomes within a community-wide context, based on our efforts to deploy a CI intervention in the regional town of Muswellbrook, New South Wales (NSW) Australia.

A program of health and wellbeing activities providing mental health and wellness messages and activities was implemented in the township over 2 years by the Family Action Centre (FAC), University of Newcastle, Australia. A ...

Evaluation is Key: Providing Appropriate Evaluation Measures for Participatory and User-Centred Design Processes of Healthcare IT

The increasing availability of healthcare IT has the potential to improve the integration of health services. Existing projects developing healthcare IT mostly disregard the potential and importance of incorporating user feedback and proper evaluation measures to gain user feedback throughout the development process.

This article aims to provide methodological guidance for evaluation in a stepwise user-centred design process.