Understanding integrated care in europe - where next?

This article is a repost and first appeared on the Optimity Advisors website in May 2018.  In previous blogs we saw how integrated care is moving from being a stated goal to delivered in practice in many different ways across Europe. These differences reflect the different political, economic, social, legal and technical contexts in which integrated care models evolve.

This diversity is necessary and healthy but creates challenges for understanding the performance of integrated care across country and even, sometimes, regional borders. None the less, the common performance themes that cut across all the countries we examined included:

• A focus on both process and outcome measures is essential irrespective of the maturity of a system’s journey to integrated care;
• Data is gathered, managed and reported in different ways across countries, although some data sets are common. The availability of data that is relevant to measuring care integration is under-developed in many countries and this needs to be addressed;
• Policy-makers and integrated care providers are looking for performance measure that are simple and easy to use and will support timely, evidence-based decisions as they mature as integrated care systems.