Understanding the European Integrated Care landscape

This article is a repost and first appeared on the Optimity Advisors website in May 2018.  The IC landscape in Europe is highly diverse, and different health systems are clearly at different stages of their integrated care implementation journeys. Context-sensitivity is fundamental when trying to understand the advancement of integrated care across the continent, from a design and implementation perspective.

In order to understand this landscape, we have recently compiled a literature review of integrated care policies and strategies in the 28 MS, Norway and Iceland, in a project funded by the European Union. In parallel, we coordinated a network of national-level researchers to map integrated care initiatives, policies and strategies in the 28 Member States, Norway and Iceland. This mapping exercise has resulted in a database containing 546 validated and categorised integrated care initiatives in this geographical scope.
The diversity in the European integrated care landscape quickly became apparent to us from different angles. For example, whereas countries like Norway, the UK, Spain and Italy have more than 40 ongoing integrated care initiatives (e.g. such as integrated care organisations, projects, and programmes), countries like France, Portugal, Romania, Austria, and Luxembourg have less than 10.