March 30, 2016 Global Event

How can we help people manage their own health?

It is an initiative of the NHS Leeds West looking for introduce¡ing a new way to help people look after their own health. Health coaching aims to give people the knowledge and skills to take control of their long term conditions. The tweet hcat will be hosted by @NHSLeedsWest using the hashtag #ManagingHealth on Tuesday 22 of March. 

June 24, 2016 Europe Practice

National rollout of Healthy Life Centres in Norway

Municipally-managed Healthy Life Centres staffed by multidisciplinary public health teams were established across Norway to advance local health promotion; government commitment to addressing chronic disease through strengthening health promotion provided a platform for change and fostered widespread scale-up of activities; the Healthy Life Centre concept was invented locally and continues to depend on locally-driven efforts, with municipalities given significant autonomy over activities; a structured approach to the rollout of Healthy Life Centres from the outset (including research, piloting and creation of national guidelines) ensured accountability and systematic evaluation; collaborative partnerships between primary care providers, Centre staff and patients proved integral to successfully running activities.

Oct. 4, 2016 Europe Practice

Introducing community-based lifestyle clinics to improve population health in Malta

Lifestyle Clinics offering healthy-living support were introduced across Malta to expand availability of health promotion and disease prevention services; a motivated, multidisciplinary group of primary care professionals led the initiative through collaborative teamwork; the initiative capitalized on recent government policies supporting chronic disease prevention and a newly-established postgraduate community nursing programme; an initial information campaign helped raise awareness and gain public acceptance for new services; patients responded well to being offered a more active role in their health; further, patients play a key advocacy role in expanding the initiative.

Oct. 4, 2016 Europe Practice

Designing a national diabetes plan for Slovenia

The Ministry of Health convened a working group to develop a national diabetes strategy. After several years of deliberation among working-group members, the finalized National Diabetes Strategy was approved by the government in 2010; an active patient association supported patient engagement and involvement throughout the initiative’s planning and implementation process; meaningful stakeholder engagement across professions and institutions helped develop a common vision for the initiative; building trust between stakeholders took time, but was necessary to allow functional teamwork and effective plan development; oversight from the Ministry of Health fostered important linkages across activities, ensuring that changes to service delivery under the initiative aligned with and complemented other parallel reforms.

Sept. 11, 2019 Americas Publication

Impact of health care reform on enrolment of immigrants in primary care in Ontario, Canada

Health is driven by the conditions in which people live and work. Immigrant populations face many challenges and disruptions in living conditions during their settlement process, including the loss of regular health services. Establishing a direct relationship with a family physician is an important aspect of the settlement process for immigrant populations

In 2003, Ontario introduced a patient enrolment system as part of health care reforms, aimed at enhancing primary health care services, but it is unclear whether immigrants have benefited from this health care reform. Therefore, this article studied whether this reform changed the extent of immigrants’ enrolment in primary care services in Ontario between 2003 and 2012.

Oct. 10, 2019 Global Publication

Integrated care for healthcare sustainability for patients living with rare diseases

The increasingly complex and multidimensional care request, combined with the presence of increasingly aware and demanding patients, accentuates the need for new strategies to preserve health systems economic sustainability. Therefore, integration mechanisms reveal an essential condition for ensuring continuity of care. The paper reviews the main literature available on the integration of heal services and relates it to rare diseases.

The literature identifies several system levers for the effective design and implementation of integrated care frameworks, namely: political support and commitment, governance, stakeholder engagement, organisational change, leadership, collaboration and trust, workforce education and training, patient empowerment, financing and incentives, ICT infrastructure and solutions, monitoring and evaluation system.

June 1, 2021 Europe, Western Pacific, Global Event

22nd International Conference on Integrated Care. ICIC22 Odense, Denmark – May 23-25 2022

Sept. 7, 2022 Global Publication

All together now – patient engagement, patient empowerment, and associated terms in personal healthcare

Patients as active partners in their personal healthcare are key drivers to reducing costs, securing an effective usage of resources, and ensuring patient-provider satisfaction. Even though these benefits are acknowledged, a theoretical framework for the plethora of concepts used in this context, such as patient engagement, patient empowerment, or patient involvement is missing. Furthermore, the heterogeneous or synonymous usage of these terms leads to miscommunication, missing standard conceptual measures, and a deficiency in theory building and testing. Our objective is to show what the relationships and distinctions between concepts focussing on patients as active partners in their personal healthcare are.