Testing cost containment of future healthcare with maintained or improved quality—The COSTCARES project

Abstract

Background Increasing healthcare costs need to be contained in order to maintain equality of access to care for all EU citizens. A cross‐disciplinary consortium of experts was supported by the EU FP7 research programme, to produce a roadmap on cost containment, while maintaining or improving the quality of healthcare. The roadmap comprises two drivers: person‐centred care and health promotion; five critical enablers also need to be addressed: information technology, quality measures, infrastructure, incentive systems, and contracting strategies. Method In order to develop and test the roadmap, a COST Action project was initiated: COST−CARES, with 28 participating countries. This paper provides an overview of evidence about the effects of each of the identified enablers. Intersections between the drivers and the enablers are identified as critical for the success of future cost containment, in tandem with maintained or improved quality in healthcare. This will require further exploration through testing. Conclusion Cost containment of future healthcare, with maintained or improved quality, needs to be addressed through a concerted approach of testing key factors. We propose a framework for test lab design based on these drivers and enablers in different European countries.

District nurses' perspectives on health‐promotive and disease‐preventive work at primary health care centres: A qualitative study

“…Together with health promotion, person-centred care (PCC) has been suggested as a solution for sustainable health care [10]. Person-centred care aims to acknowledge and endorse individual patients' resources and needs [11] and improve health outcomes and patient satisfaction [11][12][13][14].…”

Commentary: how person-centred is pharmaceutical care?

“…Ideally this patient has already received PCC, using the GPCC cornerstones of initiating and working the partnership and documentation. This model has been used in many different inpatient populations and settings [ 20 ], with beneficial outcomes [ 27 ]. With these steps in place, the pharmacist is provided with an in-progress co-created health plan.…”

“…A similar challenge remains in insufficient knowledge available on how different members of professional teams will collaborate to provide their end of the partnership; pharmacists are not expected to be the sole carer of a patient, and thus are always part of a larger team with the patient and other HCPs. Whilst PCC has often resulted in beneficial [ 5 , 27 , 32 ], even cost-effective [ 33 – 36 ], results in randomised controlled trials, there are costs associated with implementation, including increased time spent in initiating the partnership. Thus, many questions remain as to how pharmaceutical care can become more person-centred, such as financial aspects and the acceptance of the changing role among pharmacists, other HCPs, and not least, amongst patients.…”

Self-Efficacy to Manage Chronic Disease (SEMCD) scale: translation and evaluation of measurement properties for a swedish version

“…By acknowledging the patient’s unique experiences, capabilities, resources and needs, PCC can support a patient’s self-management and coping [ 3 ]. PCC coupled with health promotion aiming to improve self-management abilities has been suggested as a way to provide sustainable, affordable, high quality health care [ 5 ].…”