Enhanced Integrated Behavioral Health Model Improves Depressive Symptoms in a Low-Income, Uninsured, Primarily Hispanic Population Served by a Free and Charitable Clinic

Residents living in US-Mexico border communities have some of the worst health outcomes nationally. Rates of chronic disease such as obesity, diabetes, and related mortality in the Rio Grande Valley exceed those in most other regions of Texas and the nation. Poverty is pervasive, placing residents at high risk for poor health; they are more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards and have higher rates of chronic physical and mental health concerns.

At its foundation, integrated behavioral health care aims to address multiple health concerns, and related social determinants, by bringing behavioral health and primary care services together. No ...

Finding the Person in Electronic Health Records. A Mixed-methods Analysis of Person-centered Content and Language

The co-creation and sharing of documentation of person-centered care is important, but challenging in clinical practice. Online access to health records is considered essential to increase patient participation and empowerment in person-centered care provision.

The aims of this study were (1) to identify the extent of person-centered content in medical inpatient records and discharge letters; (2) to describe the characteristics of the language and rhetoric used in discharge letters.

Established norms for documentation in healthcare are a barrier to person-centered documentation. Patients’ needs and preferences about documentation should be explored to increase understanding of how person-centered documentation can be achieved ...

Screening Isn’t Enough: A Call to Integrate Behavioral Health Providers in Women’s Health and Perinatal Care Settings

This paper aims to enhance the current understanding of integrated mental health services in the United States and how they can be better incorporated in perinatal and women’s health specialty care from the perspective of a behavioral health provider. 

Patient Privacy and Integrated Care: The Multidisciplinary Health Care Team

This article explores legislative provisions in relation to patient privacy in the context of integrated health and social care and the development of multidisciplinary health care teams that include practitioners from private sector and government agencies in the health, education, child protection, family welfare, disability, aged-care, housing, local government and criminal justice sectors. 

The reimagination of sustainable integrated care in Ontario, Canada

To encourage clinical and financial efficiency, the Canadian province of Ontario initiated an integrated care program – Integrated Funding Models (IFMs) that required collaboration and coordination across acute and post-acute care sectors. This research shows how program implementers went beyond policy-makers’ original designs, to make integrated care sustainable for chronic diseases.

The long-term impacts of new care models on hospital use: An evaluation of the Integrated Care Transformation Programme in Mid-Nottinghamshire

In this briefing, the Improvement Analytics Unit – a partnership between the Health Foundation and NHS England and NHS Improvement – has found evidence that integrated care programmes have the potential to reduce hospital utilisation and that the best results are delivered when new ways of working start to become embedded.   

It is important that the analysis was?able to?look?at the impact of the programme?over such a long time. Integrated care programmes usually aim to reduce hospital admissions, however previous?evaluations?were not able to demonstrate?whether reductions in hospital use might begin to materialise over a longer period ...

“It’s Difficult, There’s No Formula”: Qualitative Study of Stroke Related Communication Between Primary and Secondary Healthcare Professionals

The proportion of people living with stroke is growing. In England, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guidelines for stroke recommend that a person with suspected or confirmed stroke event is admitted to a specialist stroke unit, in order to receive required treatment promptly. Stroke rehabilitation follows, which involves providing stroke survivors with support and treatment from a multidisciplinary rehabilitation team. Stroke survivors’ transition from acute settings to rehabilitation can take place either in hospital, at home or the community.

One model of care is Early Supported Discharge (ESD), which offers community-based health and social care as an ...

Re-organising primary health care to respond to the Coronavirus epidemic in Cape Town, South Africa

Cape Town is currently one of the hotspots for COVID-19 on the African continent. The Metropolitan Health Services have re-organised their primary health care (PHC) services to tackle the epidemic with a community-orientated primary care perspective. Two key goals have guided the re-organisation, the need to maintain social distancing and reduce risk to people using the services and the need to prepare for an influx of people with COVID-19. Facilities were re-organised to have ‘screening and streaming’ at the entrance and patients were separated into hot and cold streams.

Achieving patient priorities: an alternative to patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for promoting patient-centred care

For the past two decades, patient-centredness has served as one of six acknowledged dimensions of healthcare quality. Initially, healthcare institutions described patient centredness superficially—clean waiting rooms, hotel-like bed and board, access to innovative medical technology—and measured it with crude satisfaction scales. The concept of patient-centred care evolved into a model attuned to the patient experience of care, defined by the interactions between patients and providers and the care environment.This patient experience model of patient-centred care has deep normative roots around principles of the patient as the locus of control and a demand for individualisation and customisation of ...

Integrated Care and Geriatrics: A Call to Renovation from the COVID-19 Pandemic

We are experiencing an unprecedented demographic change, in terms of speed. The population over 65 years of age corresponds to approximately 9% of the world population (Population Division of the Department of Economics and Social Affairs of the United Nations).
We know that the elderly population has a high risk of suffering from serious diseases.

Long-term care facilities (LTCFs) of geriatric care has been traditionally marginalized within healthcare networks. LTCFs have constantly been living in the ambiguity that their residential nature does not fit with the relevant clinical burden of care of their frail and complex residents.

Covid 19 presents ...