Integrating care for older people with complex needs: key insights and lessons from a seven-country cross-case analysis
TL;DR: Case managers or care coordinators who support patient-centred collaborative care are key to successful integration in all cases as are policies that provide funds and support for local initiatives that allow for bottom-up innovation.
Abstract: Background: To address the challenges of caring for a growing number of older people with a mix of both health problems and functional impairment, programmes in different countries have different approaches to integrating health and social service supports. Objective: The goal of this analysis is to identify important lessons for policy makers and service providers to enable better design, implementation and spread of successful integrated care models. Methods: This paper provides a structured cross-case synthesis of seven integrated care programmes in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Key findings: All seven programmes involved bottom-up innovation driven by local needs and included: (1) a single point of entry, (2) holistic care assessments, (3) comprehensive care planning, (4) care co-ordination and (5) a well-connected provider network. The process of achieving successful integration involves collaboration and, although the specific types of collaboration varied considerably across the seven case studies, all involved a care coordinator or case manager. Most programmes were not systematically evaluated but the two with formal external evaluations showed benefit and have been expanded. Conclusions: Case managers or care coordinators who support patient-centred collaborative care are key to successful integration in all our cases as are policies that provide funds and support for local initiatives that allow for bottom-up innovation. However, more robust and systematic evaluation of these initiatives is needed to clarify the ‘business case’ for integrated health and social care and to ensure successful generalization of local successes.
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TL;DR: This Review discusses how China's health-care system would perform if hospital privatisation combined with hospital-centred fragmented delivery were to prevail, and proposes an alternative pathway that includes the reform of public hospitals to pursue the public interest and be more accountable.
277 citations
TL;DR: The evidence suggests that integrated health and social care for older people contributes to better health outcomes at a cost equivalent to usual care, thereby giving a better return on investment than more familiar ways of working.
Abstract: In most countries, a fundamental shift in the focus of clinical care for older people is needed. Instead of trying to manage numerous diseases and symptoms in a disjointed fashion, the emphasis should be on interventions that optimize older people's physical and mental capacities over their life course and that enable them to do the things they value. This, in turn, requires a change in the way services are organized: there should be more integration within the health system and between health and social services. Existing organizational structures do not have to merge; rather, a wide array of service providers must work together in a more coordinated fashion. The evidence suggests that integrated health and social care for older people contributes to better health outcomes at a cost equivalent to usual care, thereby giving a better return on investment than more familiar ways of working. Moreover, older people can participate in, and contribute to, society for longer. Integration at the level of clinical care is especially important: older people should undergo comprehensive assessments with the goal of optimizing functional ability and care plans should be shared among all providers. At the health system level, integrated care requires: (i) supportive policy, plans and regulatory frameworks; (ii) workforce development; (iii) investment in information and communication technologies; and (iv) the use of pooled budgets, bundled payments and contractual incentives. However, action can be taken at all levels of health care from front-line providers through to senior leaders - everyone has a role to play.
134 citations
TL;DR: This chapter reviews the building blocks and dynamics of integrated care systems, including key models and concepts, and concludes with some forward thinking on integrated care as an evolving science.
Abstract: The future sustainability of health and care systems is being challenged by fundamental shifts in demographics and disease status. As the ability to care becomes ever more complex and costly, integrated care has gathered momentum as an international response to these challenges in both policy and practice. Yet, the logic and meaning of integrated care remains contested. This chapter, therefore, seeks to respond to the commonly asked question ‘what is integrated care?’ It examines the rationale that lies behind integrated care and how it is defined. The chapter reviews the building blocks and dynamics of integrated care systems, including key models and concepts, and concludes with some forward thinking on integrated care as an evolving science.
65 citations
TL;DR: A conceptual framework of organizational capabilities for integrating care is developed and validates, identifying which of these capabilities may be most important, and explores the mechanisms by which they influence integrated care efforts.
Abstract: Background: Interventions aimed at integrating care have become widespread in healthcare; however, there is significant variability in their success. Differences in organizational contexts and associated capabilities may be responsible for some of this variability. Purpose: This study develops and validates a conceptual framework of organizational capabilities for integrating care, identifies which of these capabilities may be most important, and explores the mechanisms by which they influence integrated care efforts. Methods: The Context and Capabilities for Integrating Care (CCIC) Framework was developed through a literature review, and revised and validated through interviews with leaders and care providers engaged in integrated care networks in Ontario, Canada. Interviews involved open-ended questions and graphic elicitation. Quantitative content analysis was used to summarize the data. Results: The CCIC Framework consists of eighteen organizational factors in three categories: Basic Structures, People and Values, and Key Processes. The three most important capabilities shaping the capacity of organizations to implement integrated care interventions include Leadership Approach, Clinician Engagement and Leadership, and Readiness for Change. The majority of hypothesized relationships among organizational capabilities involved Readiness for Change and Partnering, emphasizing the complexity, interrelatedness and importance of these two factors to integrated care efforts. Conclusions: Organizational leaders can use the framework to determine readiness to integrate care, develop targeted change management strategies, and select appropriate partners with overlapping or complementary profiles on key capabilities. Researchers may use the results to test and refine the proposed framework, with a focus on the hypothesized relationships among organizational capabilities and between organizational capabilities and performance outcomes.
59 citations
TL;DR: This work sought to inform policy and practice by conducting a systematic hermeneutic review of literature covering integrated care strategies and concepts, finding that integrated care programs did not necessarily lead to the changes intended in experiences and outcomes.
Abstract: © 2020 The Authors. The Milbank Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Millbank Memorial Fund Policy Points Integrated care is best understood as an emergent set of practices intrinsically shaped by contextual factors, and not as a single intervention to achieve predetermined outcomes. Policies to integrate care that facilitate person-centered, relationship-based care can potentially contribute to (but not determine) improved patient experiences. There can be an association between improved patient experiences and system benefits, but these outcomes of integrated care are of different orders and do not necessarily align. Policymakers should critically evaluate integrated care programs to identify and manage conflicts and tensions between a program's aims and the context in which it is being introduced. Context: Integrated care is a broad concept, used to describe a connected set of clinical, organizational, and policy changes aimed at improving service efficiency, patient experience, and outcomes. Despite examples of successful integrated care systems, evidence for consistent and reproducible benefits remains elusive. We sought to inform policy and practice by conducting a systematic hermeneutic review of literature covering integrated care strategies and concepts. Methods: We used an emergent search strategy to identify 71 sources that considered what integrated care means and/or tested models of integrated care. Our analysis entailed (1) comparison of strategies and concepts of integrated care, (2) tracing common story lines across multiple sources, (3) developing a taxonomy of literature, and (4) generating a novel interpretation of the heterogeneous strategies and concepts of integrated care. Findings: We identified four perspectives on integrated care: patients’ perspectives, organizational strategies and policies, conceptual models, and theoretical and critical analysis. We subdivided the strategies into four framings of how integrated care manifests and is understood to effect change. Common across empirical and conceptual work was a concern with unity in the face of fragmentation as well as the development and application of similar methods to achieve this unity. However, integrated care programs did not necessarily lead to the changes intended in experiences and outcomes. We attribute this gap between expectations and results, in part, to significant misalignment between the aspiration for unity underpinning conceptual models on the one hand and the multiplicity of practical application of strategies to integrate care on the other. Conclusions: Those looking for universal answers to narrow questions about whether integrated care “works” are likely to remain disappointed. Models of integrated care need to be valued for their heuristic rather than predictive powers, and integration understood as emerging from particular as well as common contexts.
57 citations
References
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TL;DR: Accumulated evidence appears to support the Chronic Care Model as an integrated framework to guide practice redesign, and studies suggest that redesigning care using the CCM leads to improved patient care and better health outcomes.
Abstract: Developed more than a decade ago, the Chronic Care Model (CCM) is a widely adopted approach to improving ambulatory care that has guided clinical quality initiatives in the United States and around the world. We examine the evidence of the CCM’s effectiveness by reviewing articles published since 2000 that used one of five key CCM papers as a reference. Accumulated evidence appears to support the CCM as an integrated framework to guide practice redesign. Although work remains to be done in areas such as cost-effectiveness, these studies suggest that redesigning care using the CCM leads to improved patient care and better health outcomes.
1,418 citations
TL;DR: The main objectives of the fifth EUPHIN-EAST meeting were to evaluate the functioning of the EUPHin-E East network using the experience of nine pilot countries and to agree further actions.
1,164 citations
TL;DR: The quality of the coordination of care is assessed, barriers to coordinated care are described, and some solutions to improve care coordination in the United States are discussed.
Abstract: Patients with chronic illness often receive care from multiple providers in multiple settings and require coordination of their complex care. This report assesses the quality of the coordination of care, describes barriers to coordinated care, and discusses some solutions to improve care coordination in the United States.
920 citations
TL;DR: A conceptual framework that combines the concepts of primary care and integrated care, in order to understand the complexity of integrated care is proposed.
Abstract: Introduction: Primary care has a central role in integrating care within a health system. However, conceptual ambiguity regarding integrated care hampers a systematic understanding. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that combines the concepts of primary care and integrated care, in order to understand the complexity of integrated care. Methods: The search method involved a combination of electronic database searches, hand searches of reference lists (snowball method) and contacting researchers in the field. The process of synthesizing the literature was iterative, to relate the concepts of primary care and integrated care. First, we identified the general principles of primary care and integrated care. Second, we connected the dimensions of integrated care and the principles of primary care. Finally, to improve content validity we held several meetings with researchers in the field to develop and refine our conceptual framework. Results: The conceptual framework combines the functions of primary care with the dimensions of integrated care. Person-focused and population-based care serve as guiding principles for achieving integration across the care continuum. Integration plays complementary roles on the micro (clinical integration), meso (professional and organisational integration) and macro (system integration) level. Functional and normative integration ensure connectivity between the levels. Discussion: The presented conceptual framework is a first step to achieve a better understanding of the inter-relationships among the dimensions of integrated care from a primary care perspective.
672 citations
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01 Sep 2008
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