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 ...

The Contribution of Case Mix, Skill Mix and Care Processes to the Outcomes of Community Hospitals: A Population-Based Observational Study

Community hospitals could address the emerging complex care needs of patients. The authors investigated which characteristics of patients and community hospitals affect patient outcomes, in order to identify who could benefit the most from community hospital care and the best skill mix to deliver this care.

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.

An Analysis of the Sustainability of a Collaborative Care Program Used to Deliver Integrated Mental Health Care Within a Micronesian Island State

Adequate access to mental health care is a global problem, including in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). The Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) offers an opportunity to deliver improved access to mental health services in primary care centers, and key factors to program sustainability have been investigated in high-income country settings. This study's objective was to evaluate how well factors associated with sustainability have been incorporated into a CoCM in Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia. The Kosraean CoCM's strengths included its supportive leadership, team member training, and having a strong care manager and engaged primary care provider champion ...

Pathway-Driven Coordinated Telehealth System for Management of Patients With Single or Multiple Chronic Diseases in China: System Development and Retrospective Study

Integrated care enhanced with information technology has emerged as a means to transform health services to meet the long-term care needs of patients with chronic diseases. However, the feasibility of applying integrated care to the emerging "three-manager" mode in China remains to be explored. Moreover, few studies have attempted to integrate multiple types of chronic diseases into a single system.

Harnessing the Electronic Health Record to Advance Integrated Care

Integrated health care is utilized in primary care clinics to meet patients' physical, behavioral, and social needs. Current methods to collect and evaluate the effectiveness of integrated care require refinement. Using informatics and electronic health records (EHR) to distill large amounts of clinical data may help researchers measure the impact of integrated care more efficiently. This exploratory pilot study aimed to (a) determine the feasibility of using EHR documentation to identify behavioral health and social care components of integrated care, using social work as a use case, and (b) develop a lexicon to inform future research using natural language processing.

Applying Complexity Theory to a Hospital Complex Patient Care Program

Increasingly, complexity science concepts are informing health care design and practice. The present paper describes the implementation of early complexity science principles in a Complex Care Program with the aim of strengthening the provision of integrated care. Grounded in cybernetic network theory, Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model provided the guiding principles for the program’s redesign. The Viable Systems Model with its broadly applicable principles, is now the conceptual model of information management in the program. Beer’s framework has enabled a relatively small number of clinicians to coordinate care for a large cohort of patients with significant clinical ...