Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation's Health was released in September 2019, before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020. Improving social conditions remains critical to improving health outcomes, and integrating social care into health care delivery is more relevant than ever in the context of the pandemic and increased strains placed on the U.S. health care system. The report and its related products ultimately aim to help improve health and health equity, during COVID-19 and beyond. The consistent and compelling evidence on how social determinants shape health has led to a growing recognition throughout the health care sector that improving health and health equity is likely to depend â€" at least in part â€" on mitigating adverse social determinants. This recognition has been bolstered by a shift in the health care sector towards value-based payment, which incentivizes improved health outcomes for persons and populations rather than service delivery alone. The combined result of these changes has been a growing emphasis on health care systems addressing patients' social risk factors and social needs with the aim of improving health outcomes. This may involve health care systems linking individual patients with government and community social services, but important questions need to be answered about when and how health care systems should integrate social care into their practices and what kinds of infrastructure are required to facilitate such activities. Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation's Health examines the potential for integrating services addressing social needs and the social determinants of health into the delivery of health care to achieve better health outcomes. This report assesses approaches to social care integration currently being taken by health care providers and systems, and new or emerging approaches and opportunities; current roles in such integration by different disciplines and organizations, and new or emerging roles and types of providers; and current and emerging efforts to design health care systems to improve the nation's health and reduce health inequities.

Integrated Care: A Guide for Effective Implementation provides a detailed, thoughtful, and experience-based guide to the complex and potentially overwhelming process of implementing an integrated care program. The advantages of integrated care from both the clinical and administrative perspectives are many, including better detection of illness, improvement in overall health outcomes, a better patient care experience, flexibility in responding to policy and financial changes, and an emphasis on return on investment. The book addresses the emerging framework of core principles for effective integrated care, reviews the most up-to-date research on implementation, and presents practice-based experience to serve as a guide. This information is useful in both traditional integration of behavioral health into general medical settings (often primary care) or integrating general medical care into a specialty mental health or substance use treatment setting. Because administrators, clinicians, policy makers, payers and others need guidance in determining what effective implementation looks like, the authors offer a three-part examination of the key components of an implementation strategy and explore the elements essential for success. The book is grounded in the authors' real-world expertise and offers readers practical, accessible information and support: Often efforts to implement an integrated care program fail because the model is more than just "plug and play." To address this misconception, the authors explore the successful implementation from every angle -- from leadership, primary care, therapist, psychiatric provider, and policy perspectives. As procedural and institutional hurdles are being overcome, codes for integrated care have been adopted. Accordingly, the book provides in-depth coverage of finance and funding models, challenges to billing, and emerging payment models. Each of the chapter authors were selected for their direct clinical experience in various integrated environments, their leadership in ushering teams through these initiatives, and/or their deep knowledge of payment and policy barriers. Impediments to the widespread implementation of evidence-based programs include payment and regulatory barriers, lack of a workforce trained in effective collaboration, and cultural differences between the worlds of primary care and behavioral health care. Integrated Care: A Guide for Effective Implementation helps health care leaders and providers overcome these obstacles to implement a successful, patient-centered integrated care program.

High-quality primary care is the foundation of the health care system. It provides continuous, person-centered, relationship-based care that considers the needs and preferences of individuals, families, and communities. Without access to high-quality primary care, minor health problems can spiral into chronic disease, chronic disease management becomes difficult and uncoordinated, visits to emergency departments increase, preventive care lags, and health care spending soars to unsustainable levels. Unequal access to primary care remains a concern, and the COVID-19 pandemic amplified pervasive economic, mental health, and social health disparities that ubiquitous, high-quality primary care might have reduced. Primary care is the only health care component where an increased supply is associated with better population health and more equitable outcomes. For this reason, primary care is a common good, which makes the strength and quality of the country's primary care services a public concern. Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care puts forth an evidence-based plan with actionable objectives and recommendations for implementing high-quality primary care in the United States. The implementation plan of this report balances national needs for scalable solutions while allowing for adaptations to meet local needs.

This book introduces service planners and managers to successful strategies to design, implement and manage care integration programmes. It details the various components of change in individual chapters, which are illustrated with practical examples from actual care implementation projects.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

This book provides a comprehensive view of the critical issues for social workers regarding the integration of primary care and behavioral health care. It discusses integrated health care settings, interprofessional practice, new roles for social workers, and describes key evidence-based practices such as screening, person-centered care planning, motivational interviewing and wellness self-management.

This handbook shares profound insights into the main principles and concepts of integrated care. It offers a multi-disciplinary perspective with a focus on patient orientation, efficiency, and quality by applying widely recognized management approaches to the field of healthcare. The handbook also highlights international best practices and shows how integrated care can work in various health systems. In the majority of health systems around the world, the delivery of healthcare and social care is characterised by fragmentation and complexity. Consequently, much of the recent international discussion in the fields of health policy and health management has focused on the topic of integrated care. “Integrated” acknowledges the complexity of patients’ needs and aims to meet them by taking into account both health and social care aspects. Changing and improving processes in a coordinated way is at the heart of this approach. The second edition offers new chapters on people-centredness, complexity theories and evaluation methods, additional management tools and a wealth of experiences from different countries and localities. It is essential reading both for health policymakers seeking inspiration for legislation and for practitioners involved in the management of public health services who want to learn from good practice.