'Walking-the-talk': How to co-design an innovative and sustainable integrated care learning programme

Integrated care facilitates better outcomes for patients and their family, health workforce and health and social care systems. Accordingly, integrated care is a global and inherent area of work for health professionals. Despite this, formal learning programmes for workforce development in integrated care are still rare. In this paper, I have shared lessons about developing an innovative and sustainable integrated care learning programme for teachers, practitioners and learners in integrated care discipline. These lessons are drawn from my experience of leading an integrated care specialisation programme (that sits at Australian Qualification Framework Level 9) at a public university in Australia ...

Integrated care for older persons who live with complex health and social care requirements: a core set of indicators

Performance measures are an important mediating mechanism that influences the design and delivery of care. Unfortunately, it is still commonly the case that acute care indicators are employed to assess the efficacy of integrated care. This hinders the ability to accurately assess and continuously improve integrated care efforts for priority populations, including older persons who live with complex health and social care requirements. A core set of indicators is needed from which to assess the quality and impact of integrated care on these older persons and care partners.

Integrated care in a Beveridge system: experiences from England and Denmark

Health systems internationally face demands to deliver care that is better coordinated and integrated. The health system financing and delivery model may go some, but not all the way in explaining health system fragmentation. In this paper, we consider the road to care integration in two countries with Beveridge style health systems, England and Denmark, that are both ranked as highly Integrated systems in Toth's health integration index. We use the SELFIE framework to compare the policies and reforms that have affected care integration over the past 30 years in the two countries. The countries both started their reform ...

Integrated care for older people with cancer: a primary care focus

Estimates from a 2023 study indicate that cancer will continue to grow as a leading cause of health and economic burden alongside global population ageing.

Consequently, health-care providers, including primary care teams, will increasingly face substantial challenges in caring for older people with cancer who have evolving, complex, and specific needs. More than 60% of new cancer diagnoses occur in adults aged 65 years and older in high-income countries, underpinning the importance of empowering primary health-care providers (including general practitioners, community nurses, allied health professionals, and pharmacists) to provide high-quality care to this at-risk population.

Nevertheless, geriatric oncology remains peripheral ...

Experiences of implementing the 'Making Every Contact Count' initiative into a UK integrated care system: an interview study

The 'Making Every Contact Count' (MECC) approach is in line with the current National Health Service (NHS) strategy to improve and prevent health conditions in England. Despite its importance and value for preventative healthcare, implementation of MECC varies. The aim of this study was to explore the barriers and facilitators of implementing MECC and MECC training into an integrated care system (ICS).

Co-design with Integrated Care Teams: Establishing Information Needs

Co-design has been cited as playing a major role in the future of effective integrated care, however, there is a lack of reporting and reflection on the methods used. Information sharing is fundamental when working in integrated care, however sharing across professions, service settings and localities can be complex. Through co-design, we seek to establish a shared understanding of information needs within a newly formed integrated care team. In doing so we aim to inform future practice in the understanding of co-design.

Collaborative Leadership in Integrated Care Systems; Creating Leadership for the Common Good

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a catalyst for change, but such change can only happen through collaborative leadership which maintains a focus on relationships and purpose rather than solely on outputs or outcomes. This conceptual article explores how health and social care integration has been offered as one potential solution to the challenge of health and social care transformation. Specifically, Integrated Care Systems in England are intended to provide regional governance, to provide public services in a coherent and robust way. We explore this development in relation to three key aspects: the macro-level global policy context; the meso-level organizational behaviour ...

Integrated care and the behavioral health primary care provider

Primary care remains the main setting for delivery of psychiatric care. An integrated approach improves the ability of primary care providers (PCPs) to care for complex patients with behavioral health needs. This article describes integrated care and how physician associates/assistants can gain additional training to become behavioral health specialists.

The Integrated Care Workforce: What does it Need? Who does it Take?

The health and care workforce was under pressure long before the pandemic due to the development of new technologies, recurring policy reforms and dwindling ressources. It has though taken the outcry in the aftermath of COVID-19 for researchers and policymakers to realise that something fundamental needs to change. In the integrated care literature and in this journal, the fact that integrated care implementation does not work without the involvement and support of the workforce has been a recurring theme, but also little heeded. Concepts like the Quadruple Aim or the WHO European Framework for Action for integrated health services delivery ...

Personalized Integrated Care Promoting Quality of Life for Older People: Protocol for a Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial

Alzheimer disease (AD) and Parkinson disease (PD) are the 2 most common neurodegenerative diseases affecting millions of people worldwide. The Personalized Integrated Care Promoting Quality of Life for Older People (PC4L) project proposes an integrated, scalable, and interactive care ecosystem that can be easily adapted to the needs of several neurodegenerative and chronic diseases, care institutions, and end user requirements.