Collaborative Experience Success Stories in Integrated Care of Older People: A Narrative Analysis

Inter-organisational collaboration is crucial in the care of older people, as is the development of integrated care. Storytelling in organisations is one way of understanding how to achieve successful collaboration. This article provides insights into the ways in which storytelling in collaborative experiences contributes to a collective identity instrumental in the successful collaborations involved in integrated care for older people.

From Crisis to Coordination: Challenges and Opportunities for Integrated Care posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has accentuated the stark reality that, despite the efforts of the past 20 years, there remains a continued failure to embrace integrated care systems. It has also demonstrated how quickly systems, organisations and individuals can change, if they must. The uptake in telehealth, eHealth and other technological support systems is unprecedented, even though only a couple of months ago this was unthinkable on a broad scale in many countries. The swiftness of multi-disciplinary teams coming together to find flexible solutions to the day-today challenges during lockdown has shown how we can achieve effective communication and collaboration.

COVID-19 care in India: the course to self-reliance

Many times we think of the integration of health systems as an urgent need. However, there are cases (and realities) where it is necessary to centralize to homogenize the action in the face of a crisis such as the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. The public health response to COVID-19 in India has been highly centralised, resulting in a homogenous strategy applied across a sixth of the world’s population.

Integrated Care for Older People and the Implementation in the INSPIRE Care Cohort

Proposal based on the Integrated Care Manual for the Elderly (ICOPE),  has been developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to meet the health needs and demands of rapidly aging populations around the world. The Manual helps to set person-centered goals and integrate approaches at the system, service, and clinical levels. The care plan can include multiple interventions to manage declining capacity, provide social and support, develop self-management skills, and support caregivers.

The main objective of the INSPIRE study is to build a Bio-resource Research Platform for Healthy Ageing gathering biological, clinical and digital resources in order to identify markers ...

Empowering Better End-of-Life Dementia Care (EMBED-Care): A mixed methods protocol to achieve integrated person-centred care across settings

It is known that the number of people with dementia continues to increase in the world. We also know that people with dementia live to advanced stages of the disease, so they will require comprehensive palliative care. The aim objetive of this work, is to promote a “step change” in care for people with dementia and their carers to enable delivery of timely person-centred care, to identify unmet needs and improve outcomes, including comfort and qualitive of life, towards end of life. Each of six-interdependent work streams (WSs) will deliver new knowledge and sequentially build a complex intervention to improve ...

Integrating care for non-communicable diseases into routine HIV services: key considerations for policy design in sub-Saharan Africa

There is great interest for integrating care for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) into routine HIV services in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) due to the steady rise of the number of people who are ageing with HIV. Suggested health system approaches for intervening on these comorbidities have mostly been normative, with little actionable guidance on implementation, and on the practical, economic and ethical considerations of favouring people living with HIV (PLHIV) versus targeting the general population.The authors summarize opportunities and challenges related to leveraging HIV treatment platforms to address NCDs among PLHIV. It is emphasized key considerations that can guide integrated care ...

Understanding integrated care at the frontline using organisational learning theory: A participatory evaluation of multi-professional teams in East London

Integrated care has been proposed as an organising principle to address the challenges of the rising demand for care services and limited resources. There is limited understanding of the role of learning in integrated care systems. Organisational Learning (OL) theory in the guise of ‘Learning Practice’ can offer a lens to study service integration and reflect on some of the challenges faced by multi-professional teams in developing a learning culture.

The study presents findings from two qualitative evaluations of integrated care initiatives in three East London boroughs, England, undertaken between 2017 and 2018.

Different Contexts, Similar Challenges. SUSTAIN’s Experiences with Improving Integrated Care in Europe

SUSTAIN stands for ‘Sustainable Tailored Integrated Care for Older People in Europe’ (www.sustain-eu.org). The SUSTAIN-project was carried out between 2015 and 2019 by thirteen partners from eight European countries: Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

The SUSTAIN project was designed to support the development of integrated care for older people living at home with health and social care needs. Its objectives were twofold: 1. To support and monitor improvements to established integrated care initiatives and 2. To contribute to the adoption and application of such improvements to other health ...

Realising the value of integrated care in Australia beyond

PROFESSOR NICK GOODWIN, Director, Central Coast Research Institute for Integrated Care, University of Newcastle and Central Coast LHD. Co-Founder, International Foundation for Integrated Care

Over the past decade there has been a growing realisation of the need to reform health and care systems in Australia to better coordinate care, improve quality and promote value.

For example, recent reports such as the 2017 Productivity Commission’s Shifting the Dial and the 2018 CSIRO report Future of Health criticised the existing disease-based, episodic, medicallydominated and institutionally- led characteristics of the Australian health system as being unable to respond effectively to the new ...

Community health alliances as social enterprises that digitally engage citizens and integrate services: A case study in Southwestern Sydney (protocol)

Community health alliances (CHAs) are a population health approach for addressing the challenges faced by people who are united by a common area of residence, sociocultural characteristic or health need, and are generally characterised by a shared mission, shared resource needs and the task of acquiring/developing necessary organisational knowledge and skills. In South Western Sydney, CHAs are being explored as an innovative approach to support the provision of integrated health services. 

Much of the population live in local government areas with levels of disadvantage higher than the state average, with a predominance of non-communicable and chronic diseases that are ...