Clinical Interventions in Aging (Oct 2018)
Merging current healthcare trends: innovative perspective in aging care
Abstract
Miguel Ángel Gandarillas,1 Nandu Goswami2,3 1Department of Social Psychology and Methodology, Faculty of Psychology, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain; 2Physiology Division, Otto Loewi Center of Vascular Biology, Immunity and Inflammation, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria; 3Department of Health Science, Alma Mater Europea University, Maribor, Slovenia Abstract: Current trends in health care delivery and management such as predictive and personalized health care incorporating information and communication technologies, home-based care, health prevention and promotion through patients’ empowerment, care coordination, community health networks and governance represent exciting possibilities to dramatically improve health care. However, as a whole, current health care trends involve a fragmented and scattered array of practices and uncoordinated pilot projects. The present paper describes an innovative and integrated model incorporating and “assembling” best practices and projects of new innovations into an overarching health care system that can effectively address the multidimensional health care challenges related to aging patient especially with chronic health issues. The main goal of the proposed model is to address the emerging health care challenges of an aging population and stimulate improved cost-efficiency, effectiveness, and patients’ well-being. The proposed home-based and community-centered Integrated Healthcare Management System may facilitate reaching the persons in their natural context, improving early detection, and preventing illnesses. The system allows simplifying the health care institutional structures through interorganizational coordination, increasing inclusiveness and extensiveness of health care delivery. As a consequence of such coordination and integration, future merging efforts of current health care approaches may provide feasible solutions that result in improved cost-efficiency of health care services and simultaneously increase the quality of life, in particular, by switching the center of gravity of health delivery to a close relationship of individuals in their communities, making best use of their personal and social resources, especially effective in health delivery for aging persons with complex chronic illnesses. Keywords: health management, e-health, patient-centered health care, home-based care, health governance, community health
