May 17, 2016 Europe

Health-care improvements in a financially constrained environment

Although the European Council agreed on common values such as good quality, universally accessible care in 1996, those values are now under threat. Health expenditure in all European Union (EU) countries between 1996 and 2013 increased from 7·9% to 9·5% of gross domestic product. There is a need to adapt to a financially constrained environment.

WE CARE is an EU Seventh Framework Programme consortium tasked to propose a research and development roadmap for innovative, cost-contained, quality care. The roadmap should not only consider efficacy from clinical trials but also community effectiveness, including the appropriateness of services provided.

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May 17, 2016 Europe

Person-centred care after acute coronary syndrome, from hospital to primary care - A randomised controlled trial

Highlights

• Person-centred care in the recovery after an acute coronary syndrome event,
• Details of a co-created health plan to produce a partnership between patients and health care professionals,
• The transition of care continuing the partnership from in-hospital care to primary care,
• Improved self-efficacy by including a partnership compared to standard care alone.

Aim

To evaluate if person-centred care can improve self-efficacy and facilitate return to work or prior activity level in patients after an event of acute coronary syndrome.

Method

199 patients with acute coronary syndrome < 75 years were randomly assigned to person-centred care intervention or treatment as usual and ...

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May 16, 2016 Africa Europe

Voices on person-centred care

What is person-centred care to a patient, a physician, a nurse, a hospital head of department, an industry representative and a researcher? How do these people, who all have experience of receiving or working with person-centred care, see person-centred care from their perspectives? Short film clips from the University of Gothenburg Centre for Person-centred Care - GPCC. GPCC is an in terdisciplinary research centre, established in January 2010, with the support of the Swedish government's strategic investment in health and care research. Uniquely GPCC has evaluated the effects of person-centred care in controlled studies. This has established that person-centred care ...

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May 15, 2016 Europe

Lessons from transforming health services delivery: Compendium of initiatives in the WHO European Region

In order for health services delivery to accelerate gains in health outcomes it must continuously adapt and evolve according to the changing health landscape. At present, the case for change is compelling. In the context of both new challenges and opportunities, initiatives to transform services delivery across the WHO European Region has emerged. This Compendium demonstrates the diversity in activity, describing examples of health services delivery transformations from each Member State in the Region. The initiatives vary greatly in their scope and stages of implementation, from early changes to initiatives at-scale. When taken together, these examples offer unique insights for ...

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May 15, 2016 Europe

Strengthening a competent health workforce for the provision of coordinated/ integrated health services

The paper proposes a list of competencies to be consolidated by the health workforce in order to realize coordinated/integrated health services delivery. To this end, the paper proposes a cycle for the process of competencies consolidation, identifying strategies required at the services delivery level and possible tools for implementation as well as describing the enabling conditions at the health system level and providing an overview of roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders involved.

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May 15, 2016 Europe

Transforming integrated health service delivery in the WHO European Region

"Everything starts with people. Without people there is no health system." This sentiment was echoed in keynote presentations, illustrative country cases and expert interventions throughout the 2-day final consultation of the European Framework for Action on Integrated Health Services Delivery in discussions of entry points and processes for integrated health service delivery that took place in Copenhagen, Denmark on 2-3 May 2016. The event marked the final step in the development of the Framework for Action, which is centred around four key domains: people, services, system and change. The European Framework for Action resulting from this consultation will be presented ...

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May 11, 2016 Global

Report on the Global Knowledge Commons for Innovations in mHealth and eHealth

The International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth publishes (in an electronic form) the Report of the Innovation Working Group (IWG) Task Force on the Global Knowledge Commons for m-eHealth Innovations.

 

The report addresses the key challenge facing digital health, which is that of converting our collective knowledge into a global public good, accessible to all, thus enabling each actor in the ecosystem to benefit from what others know. The document postulates that a Global Knowledge Commons (GKC) for innovation in health or simply "the Commons", would be composed of three main constituents:

 

• A database of projects, products and services;
• A "Who ...

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April 26, 2016 Africa

Effects of community health interventions on under-5 mortality in rural Guinea-Bissau (EPICS): a cluster-randomised controlled trial

Background

Evidence suggests that community-based interventions that promote improved home-based practices and care-seeking behaviour can have a large impact on maternal and child mortality in regions where rates are high. We aimed to assess whether an intervention package based on the WHO Integrated Management of Childhood Illness handbook and community mobilisation could reduce under-5 mortality in rural Guinea-Bissau, where the health service infrastructure is weak.

Methods

We did a non-masked cluster-randomised controlled trial (EPICS) in the districts of Tombali and Quinara in Guinea-Bissau. Clusters of rural villages were stratifi ed by ethnicity and distance from a regional health centre, and ...

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April 26, 2016 Americas Europe Western Pacific

Integrating funds for health and social care: an evidence review

Objectives

Integrated funds for health and social care are one possible way of improving care for people with complex care requirements. If integrated funds facilitate coordinated care, this could support improvements in patient experience, and health and social care outcomes, reduce avoidable hospital admissions and delayed discharges, and so reduce costs. In this article, we examine whether this potential has been realized in practice.

Methods

We propose a framework based on agency theory for understanding the role that integrated funding can play in promoting coordinated care, and review the evidence to see whether the expected effects are realized in practice ...

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April 26, 2016 Global

Can service integration work for universal health coverage? Evidence from around the globe

Universal health coverage (UHC) is at the heart of the new 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment. Health service integration is seen by World Health Organization as an essen-tial requirement to achieve UHC. However, to date the debate on service integration hasfocused on perceived benefits rather than empirical impact. We conducted a global reviewin a systematic manner searching for empirical outcomes of service integration experimentsin UHC countries and those on the path to UHC. Sixty-seven articles and reports were found.We grouped results into a unique integration typology with six categories – medical stafffrom different disciplines; patients and medical staff; care package for ...

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