Beyond the Point of No Return: A Discourse Analysis of Healthcare Professionals’ Perceptions of Digitally Supported Person-Centred, Integrated, and Proactive Care

Most countries are facing a common challenge: a rise in the number of chronically ill patients and limited medical resources. The combination of digital support and the principles of person-centred, integrated, and proactive care (Digi-PIP care) services constitutes the most ambitious initiative for patients with long-term needs. While there is research on digital support, person-centred, integrated, and proactive care, the combination of these components has been less explored.

The data set consisted of 29 qualitative interviews with healthcare professionals involved in four Nordic Digi-PIP care initiatives. Building on prevailing discourses on the modernisation of healthcare, we used discourse analysis to ...

A Systematic Review of Interventions that Use Multidisciplinary Team Meetings to Manage Multimorbidity in Primary Care

Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings could facilitate coordination of care for individuals living with multimorbidity, yet there is limited evidence on their effectiveness. We hence explored the common characteristics of MDT meetings in primary care and assessed the effectiveness of interventions that include such meetings, designed to improve outcomes for adults living with multimorbidity.

Continuity of Care and Healthcare Costs among Patients with Chronic Disease: Evidence from Primary Care Settings in China

Though critical to primary care, continuity of care has rarely been examined in China. This study aims to assess the relationship between continuity of care and healthcare costs among patients with chronic diseases within primary care settings in China.

Integrating Health and Social Services in Finland: Regional Approaches and Governance Models

The study explores regional approaches to integrated care, focusing on regions with regular municipality-based and integrated unified health and social care administration. The aim is to describe a governance approach that supports care integration in the regions.

Integrated care with digital health innovation: pressing challenges

Digital health care has emerged as one of the most important means to deliver integrated care by care providers in recent years. As the use of digital health increases, there are some pressing issues such as interoperability of data across different healthcare information systems, regulatory environment and security and privacy of patient’s information which need to be discussed and addressed in order to reduce information silos and to ensure efficient and seamless use of digital health technologies. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

WHO guide for integration of perinatal mental health in maternal and child health services

Overview

Supporting good mental health can improve health outcomes, and the quality of maternal and child health services for all women can be improved by creating an environment where they feel safe to discuss any difficulties they are experiencing in a respectful and caring environment that is free from stigmatization. 

The guide for integration of perinatal mental health in maternal and child health services outlines an evidence-informed approach describing how program managers, health service administrators and policy-makers responsible of planning and managing maternal and child health services can develop and sustain high-quality, integrated mental health services for women during the ...

Challenges, progress, opportunities: European and Central Asian health systems

New WHO studies look at health systems across 14 countries in Europe and Central Asia to reveal how to better invest in the health of millions Allowing policy-makers the chance to compare and collaborate, recent studies from the World Health Organization present countries’ health systems at a glance.

Many citizens in the WHO European Region are fortunate to live in countries where the health system can look after them when they fall ill. But sadly, for millions of others, falling ill means having to choose between paying for medical treatment and paying for food, education and other necessities.

In some ...

International comparisons of the quality and outcomes of integrated care: Findings of the OECD pilot on stroke and chronic heart failure

Across OECD countries, two in three people aged over 65 years live with at least one chronic condition often requiring multiple interactions with different providers, making them more susceptible to poor and fragmented care. This has prompted calls for making health systems more people-centred, capable of delivering high-quality integrated care. Despite promising, mostly local-level, experiences, systems remain fragmented, focused on acute care and unsuitable to solve complex needs. Moreover, assessing and comparing the benefits of integrated care remains difficult given the lack of technically sound, policy-relevant indicators. This report presents the results of the first OECD pilot of a new ...

Social workers coordination in primary healthcare for patients with complex needs: A scoping review

Care coordination has been part of social work for some time. It has been recognized as contributing to care coordination for long-term care for the elderly and mental health but less is known about their contribution in primary care with patients with complex health and social needs. As social workers are increasingly present in primary healthcare, this scoping review aims to provide a synthesis of social workers’ coordination activities for patients with complex needs in primary healthcare.

General practitioners' perceptions of distributed leadership in providing integrated care for elderly chronic multi-morbid patients: a qualitative study

Distributed Leadership (DL) has been suggested as being helpful when different health care professionals and patients need to work together across professional and organizational boundaries to provide integrated care (IC). This study explores whether General Practitioners (GPs) adopt leadership actions that transcend organizational boundaries to provide IC for patients and discusses whether the GPs’ leadership actions in collaboration with patients and health care professionals contribute to DL.