Tehnika (Jan 2019)
Quality improvement in healthcare: Towards to integrated care models in EU
Abstract
Quality improvement in healthcare consists of systematic and continuous actions that lead to a measurable improvement in healthcare services. Most important goals for improvement in healthcare are safe, effective, patient-centres, timely, efficient, equitable healthcare. Definition of the integrated care includes initiatives seeking to improve outcomes of care by overcoming issues of fragmentation through co-ordination of services of providers along the continuum of care. Different countries of EU Member States are at different stages in the development of integrated care systems. Most countries reported continuously working on several initiatives to strengthen integration and coordination of care, such as pilot projects, implemented targeted programmes and strategies and adopted methods for cooperation. Many countries have taken initiatives on legislation, reorganisation and reimbursement systems. Integrated care can be seen to be both, a design of healthcare and a framework to achieve person-centred, efficient and safe care. Only a small number of EU Member States have developed specific indicator sets to assess integrated care. Measuring the performance of integrated care has to take into account the objectives of a health system and also needs to reflect the complexity of integrated care systems.
