Integrated Care in Action: A Practical Guide for Health, Social Care and Housing Support.

Integration is now a key expectation within the delivery of health and social care services in the UK and internationally. However, it still remains difficult to achieve and sustain in practice. Based on learning from successful, and unsuccessful, integrated care initiatives, this book is an invaluable guide for those responsible for leading, managing and delivering integrated care across health, social care and housing.

Written by an experienced team of researchers who have studied, led and supported integrated care for many years Integrated Care in Practice draws on latest evidence, innovative practice and helpful theory. It provides insights into the common ...

Towards an overarching European health information system

A european health information system (HIS) supports learning between member states through international comparisons. In addition, it informs international policy agendas. Collaboration between the major stakeholders, most importantly the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO-euro), teh European Commission and OECD, is important for member states, as this will contribute to better and more efficiently produced health intelligence. This paper focuses on this "supra-internationa" collaboration.

Integrated care: better and cheaper

Integrated care improves health, increases quality of care and lowers costs. These three goals, this Triple Aim in other words, are achieved in many examples from all over the world: from Alaska to New Zealand, from Western Europe to South Africa. However, disseminating all these good examples is easier said than done, as nationwide implementation means the simultaneous realisation of the following six components of integrated care:

1. Multidisciplinary care pathways and decision trees

2. Patient self-management and shared decision-making by patients and professionals

3. Guaranteeing professional and patient- perceived quality

4. Population-based funding and shared savings

5. An Electronic ...

Longing for Integrated Care: The Importance of Effective Governance

"Integrated care is not about creating a multidisciplinary offer/supply, but it is about creating an integrative answerd to the most important issues of people in need. A holistic approach seems logical, but it means a lot of for how we organise our health care and welfare systems, and the needed connections with other domains in life"- Mirella M.N. Minkman

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The State of Health Care Integration in Estonia

This paper summarizes an assessment of the state of health care integration in Estonia and its driving forces. In the absence of a widely accepted definition, this study defines health care integration as:

i) the delivery of care in the appropriate care setting and

ii) coordination and continuity of care across care settings.

The study focuses on integration issues related to the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, with particular attention to the role and functioning of primary care and equity issues. The findings of this analysis therefore do not provide a comprehensive assessment of quality within specific care settings ...

Digital Technologies Supporting Person-Centered Integrated Care – A Perspective

Shared electronic health and social care records in some service systems are already showing some of the benefits of digital technology and digital data for integrating health and social care. These records are one example of the beginning "digitalisation" of services that gives a glimpse of the potential of digital technology and systems for building coordinate and individualized care. 

Integrated care for older people: guidelines on community-level interventions to manage declines in intrinsic capacity

Guidelines on community-level interventions to manage declines in intrinsic capacity.

The House of Care in Scotland

Scotland´s House of Care programme aims to facilitate a fundamental shift in the relationship between person and professional, so that the person is in the driving seat of their health and social care, with self management at the heart of it.

This approach supports and enables people to articulate their own needs and decide on their own priorities, through a process of joint decision making, goal setting and action planning. 

Imperial child health general practice hubs

For most children, the GP is their main point of contact with the health servivce. While children make up nearlyy one-fifth of the population in England, they are estimated to account for two-fifths of a typical GP´s workload. Despite this, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health estimate that in many parts of the country, between 40 and 50 per cent of GPs have a had little or no formal paediatric training. Evidence suggest that many of these case could be managed outside an acute setting. 

Revisiting Organisational Learning in Integrated Care

Progress in health care integration is largely linked to changes in processes and ways of doing. These changes have knowledge management and learning implications. For this reason, the use of the concept of organisational learning is explored in the field of integrated care.