We need better tools to achieve the next generation reforms essential for delivering care that matters most to patients, say Albert Mulley and colleagues
Healthcare economies across the globe are in crisis. High income countries—whether their healthcare economies are market driven like the US or tax funded like the UK—are struggling with relentless demand for more services that are increasingly costly to deliver. Low and middle income countries are struggling to provide better and more equitable access to potentially lifesaving interventions while wisely allocating scarce resources across all sectors that affect human and social development. In rich and poor countries alike, policy makers, citizens, and health professionals are drawn to technology but are not learning how to use it most effectively or from mistakes made when its limits go unrecognised or unheeded.1
Variation in regional rates of therapeutic and diagnostic interventions and hospital based care exists globally with no measurable benefit in populations receiving more services.2345 At the same time effective primary healthcare and social services that can have a greater effect on health and wellbeing are being underused.467 The failure to deliver the right care at the right time in the right place contributes to the waste of as much as 40% of healthcare expenditures.48
Recognition of this waste, which is often associated with harm to patients, has spurred health policy reforms across the globe. One common objective is people centred care, which focuses on the needs and wants of individuals and engages them in management of their own care, including behaviours that promote and sustain health and wellbeing. A policy forum held earlier this year, which included health ministers and other representatives from members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and seven other countries, advocated a …
In December 2016, 66 health leaders from 14 countries convened at the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) to engage in cross-cultural and collaborative discussions centered on 'Rethinking Care Toward the End of Life'. Conversations focused on global perspectives on death and dying, challenges experienced by researchers, physicians, patients and family caregivers. This paper summarizes key findings and recommendations from SGS.Featured sessions focused on critical issues of end of life care led by key stakeholders, physicians, researchers, and other global leaders in palliative care. Sessions spanned across several critical themes including: patient/family/caregiver engagement, integrating health and community-based social care, eliciting and honoring patient preferences, building an evidence base for palliative care, learning from system failures, and delivering end of life care in low-resource countries. Sessions were followed by intensive collaborative discussions which helped formulate key recommendations for rethinking and ultimately advancing end of life care.Prominent lessons learned from SGS include learning from low-resource countries, development of evidence-based quality measures, implementing changes in training and education, and respecting the personal agency of patients and their families.There is a global need to rethink, and ultimately revolutionize end of life care in all countries. This paper outlines key aspects of end of life care that warrant explicit improvement through specific action from key stakeholders.
Despite progress in developing learning health systems (LHS) and associated metrics of success, a gap remains in identifying measures to guide the implementation and assessment of the impact of an oncology LHS. Our aim was to identify a balanced set of measures to guide a person-centered oncology LHS.A modified Delphi process and clinical value compass framework were used to prioritize measures for tracking LHS performance. A multidisciplinary group of 77 stakeholders, including people with cancer and family members, participated in 3 rounds of online voting followed by 50-minute discussions. Participants rated metrics on perceived importance to the LHS and discussed priorities.Voting was completed by 94% of participants and prioritized 22 measures within 8 domains. Patient and caregiver factors included clinical health (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Status, survival by cancer type and stage), functional health and quality of life (Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System [PROMIS] Global-10, Distress Thermometer, Modified Caregiver Strain Index), experience of care (advance care planning, collaboRATE, PROMIS Self-Efficacy Scale, access to care, experience of care, end-of-life quality measures), and cost and resource use (avoidance and delay in accessing care and medications, financial hardship, total cost of care). Contextual factors included team well-being (Well-being Index; voluntary staff turnover); learning culture (Improvement Readiness, compliance with Commission on Cancer quality of care measures); scholarly engagement and productivity (institutional commitment and support for research, academic productivity index); and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (screening and follow-up for social determinants of health, inclusivity of staff and patients).The person-centered LHS value compass provides a balanced set of measures that oncology practices can use to monitor and evaluate improvement across multiple domains.
New approaches to service delivery must produce greater value for patients
Momentum is gathering around efforts to achieve universal health coverage—defined by the World Health Organization as universal access to needed health services without the patient experiencing financial hardship to pay for them.1 2 In December 2012, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing universal health coverage and urging governments to provide all people with access to affordable healthcare.3 There is also strong support for making such provision a priority in the post-2015 global development framework that will succeed the millennium development goals.4 These developments are timely, for the health inequalities that leave more than a billion people without access to health services are increasingly recognized as an infringement of human rights and a constraint on the economic growth and social development of nations.5
The risk, however, is that a welcome global endeavor to ensure that more people can realize their right to health may default to a vast global investment in the replication of past mistakes.
The improvement in people’s health cannot be achieved by merely expanding and scaling up the healthcare delivery models of today. The 2010 world health report estimated that 20-40% …
Abstract
An interactive videodisc (using a single screen Macintosh II, HyperCard driven, Level III, CAV interactive videodisc) has been designed, produced, and pretested to permit patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), facing a choice of surgery or watchful waiting, to take an active role in decision-making. The Informed Patient Decision-Making Procedure (IPDP) educates the patient about the benefits and harms of two treatment choices: prostatectomy and watchful waiting for BPH, by presenting patient-specific data derived from an analysis of medical outcomes. and video testimonials from patients with good and unfortunate outcomes of the therapeutic options. The IPDP standardizes the information provided to the patients, provides informed consent, gathers follow-up outcomes research data, and permits automated assessment of patient preferences and utilities. In this demonstration, the development of the IPDP is discussed, the videodisc program is presented, and lessons learned in creating medical videodiscs are shared.
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