Integrated health and community systems strengthening for improved contraceptive access and uptake in Nampula province, Mozambique

As with all types of interventions, the integration of health services demands an adjustment to contextual characteristics, ranging from the burden of disease to society and culture. Thus, in developing countries across Africa, efforts towards the integration of health services overwhelmingly focus on communicable diseases and family planning, and aim to involve existing community structures in the delivery of health services.

Such is the case of the USAID-funded Strengthening Communities through Integrated Programming (SCIP) project in Nampula province, Mozambique. This project, implemented from 2009 to 2015 by Pathfinder International and its partners, worked to increase access to contraceptive services by ...

Older people with social care needs and multiple long-term conditions

In November 2015, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK published a guideline on care and support for older people with social care needs and multiple long-term conditions. The guideline recommends that care should be integrated and person-centred, while at present “some people are still being treated as a collection of conditions or symptoms, rather than as a whole person”. NICE calls for a designated care coordinator who would serve as the older person’s first point of contact as well as communicate with all health and social care services, including those provided by non-governmental ...

What does it take to make integrated care work?: A ‘cookbook’ for large-scale deployment of coordinated care and telehealth. A personalised approach that will benefit patients in your organisation.

Evidence on integrated care is not only needed to show which interventions work, but also to understand how organisational processes affect these interventions. Therefore, evidence from large-scale implementations is especially important. In October 2015, the consortium of the EU-funded programme 'Advancing Care Coordination and Telehealth Deployment' (ACT) published a ‘cookbook’ of good practices, focusing on the structural and organisational drivers as well as barriers to large-scale deployment of care coordination and telehealth in five European regions. The report centres on chronic patients and elderly people, giving recommendations regarding staff engagement,  patient adherence, risk stratification and programme assessment. The report does ...

Acute hospitals and integrated care

In March 2015, the King’s Fund published a report regarding the progress made by five acute hospital providers in England towards developing more integrated models of care. According to the report, becoming more closely integrated with primary care has proved a considerable challenge for these hospitals. This is partly due to the lack of alternatives to building relationships on a practice-by-practice basis. As the report explains, GP provider groups or federations “are still at an early stage of development in many areas of the country, and where they do exist it is not always clear that they are sufficiently ...

Integrated care: meaning, logic, applications, and implications – a discussion paper

Integrated care is a burgeoning field. As is often the case in new areas of inquiry and action, conceptual clarification is demanded. Without such attention, it would be difficult to advance theory and practice in this increasingly important professional arena. In the following discussion paper, the authors explore the intellectual territory of integrated care, and underscore the need for a patient-centric imperative and meaning. They also examine the practical applications and implications arising from their views. The intention is to stimulate fruitful dialogue and debate about what ‘integrated care’ could and should be.

What is person-centered health care?

What is person-centred health care? There are many definitions of person-centred (patient-or client-centred) health care in the literature. The Victorian Department of Human Services (2003) defines person-centred care as ‘treatment and care provided by health services [that] places the person at the centre of their own care and considers the needs of the older person’s carers’. The main features of person-centred health care derived from the literature can be encompassed within the concept of partnership. The overriding message is that person-centred care is about a collaborative and respectful partnership between the service provider and user. The service provider respects ...

People-centred health care

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the patient’s perspective of health care and how health systems can better respond to the needs of all health care stakeholders and constituencies in a holistic manner. Previous recommendations of Member States through the WHO Regional Committees for the Western Pacific and South-East Asia reflect the need to pursue work in the following: equity and fairness into policies; the development of programmes firmly grounded in ethical principles; the quality of health care and patient safety; human dignity, patients’ rights and needs, and the role of families, culture and society; the ...