Barriers and enablers of integrated care in the UK: a rapid evidence review
Thomson, L.J. & Chatterjee, H.J. (2024) Barriers and enablers of integrated care in the UK: A rapid evidence review of review articles and grey literature 2018-2022. Frontiers in Public Health, 11(1286479)
Integrated care refers to person-centred and coordinated, health and social care, and community services. Integrated care systems are partnerships of organizations that deliver health and care services which were placed on a statutory footing in England, April 2022. Due to the need for fast, accessible, and relevant evidence, a rapid review was conducted according to World Health Organization methods to determine barriers and enablers of integrated care across the United Kingdom, 2018–2022. Databases were searched for review articles reporting evaluation of integrated care interventions involving medical (clinical and diagnostic) and nonmedical (public health services and community-based or social care/person-centred care) approaches. Thirty-four reviews and 21 grey literature reports fitted inclusion criteria of adult physical/mental health outcomes/multiple morbidities.
Thematic analysis revealed six themes: Collaborative approach; Costs; Evidence and evaluation; Integration of care; Professional roles; and Service user factors with 20 subthemes including key barriers (cost effectiveness; effectiveness of integrated care; evaluation methods; focus of evidence; future research; impact of integration) and enablers (accessing care; collaboration and partnership; concept of integration; inter-professional relationships; person-centred ethos).
Findings indicated a paucity of robust research to evaluate such interventions and lack of standardised methodology to assess cost effectiveness, although a growing interest in co-production has engendered information sharing and reduced duplication, and inter-professional collaborations to bridge task-related gaps and overlaps. The importance of identifying elements of integrated care associated with successful outcomes and determining sustainability of interventions meeting joined-up care and preventive population health objectives was highlighted.
See full review: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1286479
Resource Output from the Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities (MCA) Programme
Mobilising Community Assets (MCA) is a three-phase UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded Research Programme running from 2021 to 2027. It is coordinated by the Culture-Nature-Health Research Group at University College London, in partnership with the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), led by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), with Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Medical Research Council (MRC). MCA has encouraged the projects it has funded throughout the UK to share knowledge and approaches to integration of community assets into the integrated care structures that exist in the local communities.
