Hospital-at-home Integrated Care Programme for the management of disabling health crises in older patients: comparison with bed-based Intermediate Care

This study analysed the clinical impact of a home-based intermediate Care model in the Catalan health system, comparing it with usual bed-based care to check if the extended CGA-based hospital-at-home programme has an association with shorter stay and favourable clinical outcomes and if is needed to do studies to test this intervention to the whole Catalan integrated care system. 

Integrated Person-Centered Health Care for All Women During Pregnancy: Implementing World Health Organization Recommendations on Antenatal Care for a Positive Pregnancy Experience

In 2015, Unnited Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to continue the momentum of the Milennium Development Goals and address a broarder range of development issues. The World Health Organization (WHO) identified target 3.8, universal health coverage, as the key to achieving all other health-related SDGs. To that end, Every Woman Every Child movement developed the Global Strategy for Women´s, Children´s, and Adolescentss´Health (2016-2030) with the aim of ending all preventable deaths of women, children, and adolescents and ensuring their health and well-being. The strategy provides a framework for countries to ...

Integrating Social Services and Home-Based Primary Care for High-Risk Patients

There is a consensus that our current hospital-intensive approach to care is deeply flawed. This review article describes the research evidence for developing a better system of care for high-cost, high-risk patients. It reviews the evidence that home-centred care and integration of health care with social services are the cornerstones of a more humane and efficient system. In the hope of stimulating further discussion and debate, the authors summarize existing viewpoints on how a home-centered system, which integrates social and medical services, might emerge in the next few years. 

The role of informatics in patient-centered care and personalized medicine

This article covers the critical role that laboratory information systems, electronic medical records, and digital imaging plays in patient-centered personalized medicine. The value of integrated diagnostic reports, clinical decision support, and the use of whole-slide imaging to better evaluate cytology samples destined for molecular testing is discussed. This article also highlights the barriers to the widespread adoption ot these disruptive technologies due to regulatory obstacles, limited commercial solutions, poor interoperability, andlack of standardization. 

People powered primary care: learning from Halton

A community-centred approach to health called Community Wellbeing Practices (CWP) is being to patients at all 17 GP Practices in Halton in order to respond more appropriately to patients´social needs which are often an underlying reason for their presentation at primary care services. 

Early findings from the evaluation of the integrated care and support pioneers in England

Integrating health and social care is priority in England, although there is little evidence that previous iniciatives have reduce hospitals admissions or costs. Twenty-five Integrated Care Pioneers have been established to drive change "at scale and place". The early phases of their evaluation (April 2014-June 2016) aimed to identify their objetives, plans ans activities, and to assess the extend to which they have overcome barriers to integration. In the longer-term, we will assess whether integrated care leads to improved outcomes and quality of care and at what cost. 

Experiencing integration: a qualitative pilot study of consumer and provider experiences of integrated primary health care in Australia

The terms integration and integrated care describe the complex, patient-centred strategies to improve coordination of healthcare services. Frameworks exist to conceptualise these terms, but these have been developed from a professional viewpoint. 

The objetive of this study was to explore consumers and provider´s concepts, expectations and experience of integrated care. A key focus was whether frameworks developed from a professional perspective are effective models to explore people´s experiences. 

Feasibility of an implementation strategy for the integration of health promotion in routine primary care: a quantitative process evaluation

Process evaluation is recommended to improve the understanding of underlying mechanisms related to clinicians, patients, contect and intervention delivery that may impact on trial or program results, feasibility and transferability to practice. The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of the Prescribe Healthy Life (PVS from the Spanish "Prescribe Vida Saludable") implementation strategy for enhancing the adoption and implementation of an evidence-based health promotion intervention in primary health care. 

Access and utilisation of primary health care services comparing urban and rural areas of Riyadh Providence, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has seen an increase in chronic  diseases. International evidence suggest that early intervention is the best approach to reduce the burden of chronic disease. However, the limited research available suggests that health care access remains unequal, with rural populations having the poorest access to and utilisation of primary health care centres and, consequently, the poorest health outcomes. This study aimed to examine the factors influencing the access to and utilisation of primary health care centres in urban and rural areas of Riyadh province of the KSA. 

Understanding and Evaluating the Implementation on Integrated Care: A "Three Pipe Problem"

Altought we have come a long way in being able to articulate the key building blocks of integrated care, the interplay between them is so complex and interwined that it seems an impossible challenge to create any simple implementation model. Yet, if integrated care is to advance, we must become better at smoothing over the many obstacles and challenges to implementation that have bedevilled the uptake and roll-out of even the most proven of integrated care interventions.

This is quite the "three-pipe problem" for integrated care since science has yet to make the real breakthrough to address how we might ...