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 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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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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March 16, 2016 Europe

ENS4Care: Evidence Based Guidelines for Nurses and Social Care Workers for the deployment of eHealth services

The EU-funded Ens4Care project has developed five guidelines for European nurses and social workers on how to use eHealth for promoting a healthy lifestyle and prevention, clinical practice, skills development for advanced roles, integrated care and nurse ePrescribing. 

The 2-year-project, that was launched in December 2013, funded by the EU and coordinated by the European Federation of Nurses Associations (EFN) together with 24 partners from all over Europe, including a mix of different professional associations in nursing and social care, nursing regulators and unions, informal carers, patients, researchers and research communities, civil society representatives and industry. They have collected a ...

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March 16, 2016 Europe

Bringing together physical and mental health: A new frontier for integrated care

In March 2016, the King’s Fund published a compelling case for this ‘new frontier’ for integration:physical and mental health. It gives service users’ perspectives on what integrated care would look like and highlights 10 areas that offer some of the biggest opportunities for improving the quality and controlling costs: 

1. Incorporating mental health into public health programmes
2. Promoting health among people with severe mental illnesses
3. Improving management of medically unexplained symptoms in primary care
4. Strengthening primary care for the physical health needs of people with severe mental illnesses
5. Supporting the mental health of people with long-term conditions
6. Supporting the ...

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March 14, 2016 Europe

Improving the Delivery of Adult Diabetes Care Through Integration: Sharing Experience and Learning

In October 2014 the charity Diabetes UK published a report titled "Improving the Delivery of Adult Diabetes Care Through Integration: Sharing Experience and Learning".  The report identifies five key enablers for integrated care and outlines specific local initiatives in the UK which deliver integrated care for patients with diabetes. For example, the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust (which delivers community and hospital services in Wolverhampton) along with the local Clinical Commissioning Group and various GP practices have been involved in an integrated and patient-centred model of diabetes care for many years. The model is characterised by partnerships between primary and ...

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March 3, 2016 Europe

The Right Medicine: Improving Care in Care Homes.

The increase of polypharmacy together with the population aging is making care homes a central point to develop health care programmes, specially related to medicines management and integration of different health care proffessionals.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society has recently published a report addressing the main issues of medicine use in care homes. The needs identified by the authors include developing better communication systems, reducing falls in care homes, decreasing inappropriate use of psychotropic medicines, improving coordinated end of life care and lowering waste of medicines at home.

The report includes some recommendations such as giving pharmacists a major role in ...

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Feb. 25, 2016 Europe

My life, my support, my choice

In March 2015 National Voices and Think Local Act Personal issued the report titled My Life, my support, my choice, which outlines what children and young people with complex lives want coordinated care to look like. The document uses the term "complex lives” to include all children and young people who are likely to need care and support from multiple services throughout their life. The report reveals that central to their needs and preferences is the right to live the way they want, so the publication also looks at what exactly children and young people want from their lives. It ...

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