IPCHS. Integrated People-Centred Health Services

Publications

This growing repository holds WHO documents, scientific publications, policy documents, implementation reports, presentations and others with information and insights about integrated people-centred health services. Share your publication by clicking “Add publication”.

April 24, 2020 Global

The key role of palliative care in response to the COVID-19 tsunami of suffering

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought a tsunami of suffering that is devastating even well resourced countries. The disease has wreaked havoc on health systems and generated immense losses for families, communities, and economies, in addition to the growing death toll. In this most challenging time, health responders can take advantage of palliative care know-how to focus on compassionate care and dignity, provide rational access to essential opioid medicines, and mitigate social isolation at the end of life and caregiver distress. 

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April 24, 2020 Global

Not a luxury: a call to maintain sexual and reproductive health in humanitarian and fragile settings during the COVID-19 pandemic

About 1·8 billion people live in fragile contexts worldwide,1 including 168 million individuals in need of humanitarian assistance. Approximately a quarter of those in fragile contexts are women and girls of reproductive age. Experience from past epidemics in these settings has showed that discontinuing healthcare services deemed unrelated to the epidemic response resulted in more deaths than did the epidemic itself. The COVID-19 pandemic will magnify the risks inherent to resource reshuffling at the expense of other services; however, sexual and reproductive health cannot be viewed as a luxury.

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April 17, 2020 Global

What do the healthcare experiences of people with long-term conditions tell us about person-centred care? A systematic review.

Growing numbers of people now live with long term conditions. For each person, the challenges are multiple and unique to that individual. In recognition of this, health policy places greater emphasis on the delivery of person-centred care (PCC). However, patients report declining levels of such care. One reason for this may be a mismatch between patient and professional/policy understanding of PCC. PCC does not depend on the efforts of the clinician alone, but results from a collaboration with the patient and needs to be enabled by the wider organisational and educational systems.

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April 17, 2020 Global

Comparing International Models of Integrated Care: How Can We Learn Across Borders?

Providers, managers, health system leaders, and researchers could learn across countries implementing system-wide models of integrated care, but require accessible methods to do so. This study assesses if a common framework could describe and compare key components of international models of integrated care.

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April 8, 2020 Global

Innovative Integrated Health And Social Care Programs In Eleven High-Income Countries

High-income countries face the challenge of providing effective and efficient care to the relatively small proportion of their populations with high health and social care needs. Recent reports suggest that integrated health and social care programs target specific high-needs population segments, coordinate health and social care services to meet their clients’ needs, and engage clients and their caregivers. We identified thirty health and social care programs in eleven high-income countries that delivered care in new ways. We used a structured survey to characterize the strategies and activities used by these programs to identify and recruit clients, coordinate care, and engage ...

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April 7, 2020 Global

Integrated Care Search: development and validation of a PubMed search filter for retrieving the integrated care research evidence

Integrated care is an increasingly important principle for organising healthcare. Integrated care models show promise in reducing resource wastage and service fragmentation whilst improving the accessibility, patient-centredness and quality of care for patients. Those needing reliable access to the growing research evidence base for integrated care can be frustrated by search challenges reflective of the topic’s complexity. The aim of this study is to report the empirical development and validation of two search filters for rapid and effective retrieval of integrated care evidence in PubMed. One filter is optimised for recall and the other for precision.

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April 6, 2020 Global

WHO Guideline: recommendations on digital interventions for health system strengthening

The key aim of this guideline is to present recommendations based on a critical evaluation of the evidence on emerging digital health interventions that are contributing to health system improvements, based on an assessment of the benefits, harms, acceptability, feasibility, resource use and equity considerations. For the purposes of this version of the guideline, the recommendations examine the extent to which digital health interventions, primarily available via mobile devices, are able to address health system challenges along the pathway to UHC. By reviewing the evidence of different digital interventions against comparative options, as well as assessing the risks, this guideline ...

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Dec. 20, 2019 Global

Comparative case studies in integrated care implementation from across the globe: a quest for action

Integrated care is the coordination of general and behavioral health and is a highly promising and practical approach to improving healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. While there is growing interest and investment in integrated care implementation internationally, there are no formal guidelines for integrated care implementation applicable to diverse healthcare systems. Furthermore, there is a complex interplay of factors at multiple levels of influence that are necessary for successful implementation of integrated care in health systems

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Dec. 6, 2019 Global

Mapping Evidence of Patients’ Experiences in Integrated Care Settings: A Protocol for a Scoping Review

Integrated care (IC) models have emerged to address gaps in care for individuals with complex healthcare needs. Although the clinical and cost-effectiveness of IC models are well-established, the understanding of whether IC models facilitate a patient-centred care experience from the patients’ perspective is not well understood. This scoping review aims to comprehensively map the literature to provide a broad overview of patients’ experiences in IC settings with a focus on the experiences of complex patients with comorbid mental and physical illnesses. It also aims to describe current gaps identified in the literature in our understanding of aspects of care that ...

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