Improving Person-Centredness in Integrated Care for Older People: Experiences from Thirteen Integrated Care Sites in Europe

Abstract

Introduction In Europe, integrated care sites are increasingly being put in place to provide care to older people with multiple health and social care needs who live at home [1, 2]. In this context, integrated care is defined as those approaches that proactively seek to structure and coordinate health and social care for older people in their home environments, centred around older people's needs [3-7]. One of the main principles of integrated care is person-centredness [8-12]. The literature includes several definitions of person-centredness but a universally agreed one is lacking [13-18]. Common elements in these definitions include: 1) empowering and encouraging people to participate actively, as equal partners, in decision-making processes about their own care, and/or to manage their own health and care; 2) establishing an accommodating, cooperative and ongoing relationship between the professional, the person receiving care and the informal carer, including respectful communication and active listening; 3) having an understanding of the specific (health) concerns of

Different Contexts, Similar Challenges. SUSTAIN’s Experiences with Improving Integrated Care in Europe

“…The project has generated lots of insights into and experiences with integrated care implementation and evaluation [7,8]. This special IJIC issue on SUSTAIN features six papers covering a variety of aspects of integrated care, including the implementation of activities to improve integrated care [9][10][11], the exploration of experiences of different stakeholders with integrated care, i.e. service users, informal carers, professionals, and managers [9,[11][12][13][14], and the evaluation of integrated care by means of a Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PREM) [14].…”

“…This special IJIC issue on SUSTAIN features six papers covering a variety of aspects of integrated care, including the implementation of activities to improve integrated care [9][10][11], the exploration of experiences of different stakeholders with integrated care, i.e. service users, informal carers, professionals, and managers [9,[11][12][13][14], and the evaluation of integrated care by means of a Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PREM) [14]. The SUSTAIN project generated several overall lessons from its experiences of both developing and evaluating integrated care improvements [7].…”

“…This special issue features three papers that present activities that were developed and implemented to tackle some of these challenges. The papers by Stoop et al [11] and Lette et al [9] review all integrated care initiatives that participated in SUSTAIN, reflecting activities that were undertaken by the stakeholders of the initiatives to improve person-centredness and safety respectively. The paper by MacInnes et al [10] focusses on the improvement process of one specific integrated care initiative in the United Kingdom.…”

“…Examples include building a multidisciplinary team, developing tools for needs assessment and care planning, doing home safety assessments, organizing training on interprofessional communication and collaborating, and empowering users and their informal carers to play a role in healthcare decisions. The studies of Stoop et al [11] and Lette et al [9], which are featured in this special issue, reflect on these improvement activities and address experiences with these activities from multiple perspectives, i.e. the perspectives of managers and health and social care providers as well as older people and their informal carers.…”

The Academic Collaborative Center Older Adults: A Description of Co-Creation between Science, Care Practice and Education with the Aim to Contribute to Person-Centered Care for Older Adults

“…To provide tailored care and support for older adults, sensitivity regarding their individual needs, wishes and possibilities is essential, but challenging for care professionals. There is an implementation gap; although care organizations embrace PCC, they struggle to bring it into practice [18].…”