Primary care: the sleeping giant of research delivery

A sustainable NHS requires a shift from reactive acute care to proactive ambulatory care, from secondary care to primary care, with a focus on health creation by empowering people and communities. This will require evaluation of transformed models of care to create a new evidence base, which in turn requires a strong primary care research delivery infrastructure.

Learning from long COVID: integrated care for multiple long-term conditions

Long COVID is a multisystem condition requiring a range of medical, therapeutic, and psychological inputs. Given the complexity of the illness affecting multiple organ systems, often impacting physical and mental health, individuals can be heavy healthcare users across primary, secondary, and emergency services.

The long COVID clinics commissioned in England have provided an opportunity to innovate within a complex care pathway, bringing multiple providers together to meet needs broader than has been historically possible for many other complex conditions. Designing these new services from a blank page has enabled teams to co-create services with patient groups and work more effectively ...

Components and Outcomes in Under-and Postgraduate Medical Education to Prepare for the Delivery of Integrated Care for the Elderly: A Scoping Review

The ageing society requires physicians who can deliver integrated care, but it is unclear how they should be prepared for doing so. This scoping review aims to create an overview of educational programmes that prepare (future) physicians to deliver integrated care while addressing components and outcomes of the interventions.

Barriers and challenges to integrated care

Integrated care is critical to the successful delivery of modern day health and social care services, however the implementation into practice poses many barriers and challenges. This article seeks to identify these barriers and present methods through which to aim to address and overcome these.

Integrated care for children living with complex care needs: navigating the long and winding road

An increasing number of children are living with complex care needs resulting from multiple concurrent conditions. Due to these conditions, various health problems can arise and necessitate screening, prevention, and treatment at different ages during childhood. Each child has an individual constellation and combination of health problems, which implies that multiple health and social care providers across various sectors are required to address these health problems.

Lessons learnt while integrating services for children: qualitative interviews with professional stakeholders

In the English NHS, integrated care is seen as an opportunity to deliver joined-up care for children and families. This paper examines the lessons learnt by professional stakeholders in the process of developing different examples of integrated models of care/frameworks for children’s services.

Integrated Care for Older People with Different Frailty Levels: A Qualitative Study of Local Implementation of a National Policy in Luton, England

The NHS England General Medical Services 2017-18 contract made it mandatory for general practices in England to identify and manage older people proactively. In response to the national policy, the Luton Framework for Frailty (LFF) programme was developed to target older residents of Luton and offer interventions according to their frailty level. The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the LFF and the factors that affect the implementation of a proactive integrated care service for older people with different frailty levels (OPDFL).

Integrated care for children living with complex care needs: an evolutionary concept analysis

Children with complex care needs (CCNs) are in need of improved access to healthcare services, communication, and support from healthcare professionals to ensure high-quality care is delivered to meet their needs.

Integrated care is viewed as a key component of care delivery for children with CCNs, as it promotes the integration of healthcare systems to provide family and child-centred care across the entire health spectrum. There are many definitions and frameworks that support integrated care, but there is a lack of conceptual clarity around the term. Furthermore, it is often unclear how integrated care can be delivered to children with ...

Development of a Person-Centred Integrated Care Approach for Chronic Disease Management in Dutch Primary Care: A Mixed-Method Study

To reduce the burden of chronic diseases on society and individuals, European countries implemented chronic Disease Management Programs (DMPs) that focus on the management of a single chronic disease. However, due to the fact that the scientific evidence that DMPs reduce the burden of chronic diseases is not convincing, patients with multimorbidity may receive overlapping or conflicting treatment advice, and a single disease approach may be conflicting with the core competencies of primary care. In addition, in the Netherlands, care is shifting from DMPs to person-centred integrated care (PC-IC) approaches.

‘Sometimes you need an eye-opener’: A qualitative study on nursing assistants' experiences of developing communication skills through an educational intervention on person-centred communication

To explore nursing assistants' (NAs') experiences of developing communication skills while participating in an educational intervention on person-centred communication. The findings describe NAs' experiences concerning the communication skills needed for building relationships with older persons and handling emotionally challenging situations. The educational intervention increased their knowledge and awareness of the importance of communication skills and how such skills are developed and refined.