Primary Care – AQuAS Blog

How to foster an integrated health and social care centred on the individual in a local environment

14 Mar

SUSTAIN is a Horizon2020 European Project related to integrated care for older people that live at home with complex health and social needs. Thirteen initiatives from seven European projects participate in it.

It is a project whose aim is to improve a range of things including the care centred on the individual, the coordination of teams of professionals, the preventive nature of care, safety and efficiency.

In Catalonia, two initiatives (Social and Health Integration of Sabadell Nord and the Programme for complex chronic and advanced patients and the geriatric population of Osona) have participated in the design and development of projects for improvement which have been assessed by AQuAS (you can read the report and article here).

On 23^rd January, 2019, professionals involved in the groups that are the driving force of the two local initiatives (Sabadell and Osona) of integrated health and social care – family doctors, workers and social workers, nurses, geriatric and management personnel- met at AQuAS in their first joint meeting.

(SUSTAIN team Sabadell, Osona and AQuAS in Barcelona

The professionals were able to share thoughts on one question: What remains of the SUSTAIN project in the territory?

This was the starting point to identify specific actions that can make the projects sustainable and to also comment on aspects for improvement beyond the projects.

The aim was to identify opportunities within reach of the local initiatives themselves that could serve to generate a more favourable environment for integrated health and social care centred on the individual, both preventive and reactive in nature.

From the brainstorming that was done, a multitude of local actions can be derived with which to drive integrated health and social care centred on the individual. Let’s look at it in detail:

Prioritise at a population level Delimiting a population group for which it is deemed most important to apply the new PIAI method (Individualised Plan for Integrated Care), so that efforts can be concentrated on this group until the context allows for scaling up to the entire population of 65 and older. One possibility would be the older people who live at home with complex health and social needs who at present receive home-based healthcare, or for those cases known by primary healthcare but are not beneficiaries of home-based social care. This would be done in order to eliminate the barrier limiting access to social services or because there is a lack of awareness of these social service
Provide continuity in coordination between sectors, while taking into consideration the suitability of the new PIAI method for each individual case Continuing with periodic meetings of the team of professionals in charge of the multidimensional assessment of needs so as to plan an individualised and integrated health and social care (at least of the triad of primary care, family medicine-nursing-social work). These meetings, held on a monthly basis, would enable the teams to consider who, among those users visited recently (in primary care centres, at home, at local social services, at intermediary care in the case of Osona), would particularly benefit from the integrated and participative approach of SUSTAIN, with the possible introduction of changes or objectives to improve their care and their quality of life.
Inviting professionals that have not participated in SUSTAIN to use the new PIAI method, giving these professionals the necessary tools (time, training) so they can familiarise themselves with the approach of integrated health and social care centred on the individual. With this in mind, there is talk of the importance of “maintaining the spirit of SUSTAIN” and in gradually getting the most reluctant professionals more involved in introducing changes to their way of working.
Carrying out an analysis of the different capacities and responsibilities of each professional in primary care teams (family medicine-nursing-social work-social health work), and sharing out roles and responsibilities ad hoc, which can enhance the skills of each individual. This could mean that professionals who officially occupy the same position (for example, family medicine) would become specialised in one or another type of care (emergency, development of the PIAI, specific pathologies), and it would mean accepting that not all professionals with the same position need do the same: “one-size-only professionals are not needed”.
Enhancing the figure of the spokesperson in a healthcare team, both when dealing with a user as well as an internal coordinator of a team, emphasising that the user has a team with professionals that interact with each other in order to provide solutions to their different needs as quickly as possible. The emphasis is on the opportunity that workers and social workers have in acting as liaison officers between primary care, local social services and community resources while at the same time coordinating actions which are contained in the PIAI.
Analysing how the figure of the social and health worker can best fit in In the case of Sabadell, this figure has only been incorporated very recently. An analysis will need to be carried out with the entire group of professionals that intervene in care but especially with the social workers (under contract with local social services, socio-health workers or social workers specialised in intermediary care). This will be done in order to understand their capacities and perspectives of what function each professional should have bearing in mind their particularities and the specific environments in which they work (for example, specific tools and procedures they can apply, what information systems they have at their disposal or what other professionals they are in direct contact with).
Set up safe and respectful local systems with the LOPD (Spanish personal data protection law) in order to exchange the minimal information necessary to carry out a joint multidimensional assessment and to share the PAIAs among the most important professionals in each case. The example of Integrated System of Health in Osona (SISO) is mentioned, which enables primary care professionals to see which users are admitted in the hospital centres that make up the system, or the mechanism foreseen by the County Council of Osona to enable social health workers employed in health centres to consult the degree of dependency of a user.

We end this post by commenting that this week we participated in the final conference of the project in Brussels.

Representatives of the Osona SUSTAIN team, Sabadell and AQuAS in Brussels

Post written by Jillian Reynolds, Lina Masana, Nuri Cayuelas and Mireia Espallargues.

Health and poverty are hereditary: can we remedy this?

17 May

In recent years, child poverty has increased in Catalonia as a result of the economic crisis. According to the 2016 figures from the Idescat, the latest figures available, and from 2009, children are the group most at risk of poverty, more than the adult population and also more than the 65-year-old or older population group.

“Child health and poverty. What can we learn from the data?” was the title of the conference held within the framework of the Celebration of the 2018 World Health Day.

Data from the latest report related to children and the effects of the crisis on the health of the population were highlighted at the conference, published by the Observatory of the Health System of Catalonia: children with a lower socio-economic level present up to 5 times more morbidity, consume more pharmaceutical drugs (three times more psychotropic drugs) than the remainder of the child population, visit mental health centres more frequently (5.9% of girls and 11.4% of boys as opposed to 1.3% and 2.2% in girls and boys with a higher socio-economic level) and are admitted more to hospitals (45 girls and 58 boys for every 1000 as opposed to 13 and 26, respectively) especially for psychiatric reasons.

A child’s health largely depends on the economy of their parents and those that belong to families with a lower socio-economic level have more health problems, a fact that can have disastrous consequences in other areas such as education and social life and which condition their future. This fact is exacerbated in the case of children with special needs or chronic diseases where their health suffers even more from the effects of poverty because in some cases their care requires specific products which families cannot afford.

This is one of the problems that we are facing right now. There is growing scientific evidence, both in biology and in social sciences, of the importance of the early years in life (including exposure in the womb) in the development of the capacities that stimulate personal well-being throughout the life cycle. Childhood is also a structural transmitter of inequalities, both from a health and socio-economic point of view. If nothing is done, boys and girls who belong to families with few resources run the risk of growing up into adults with worse health and a lower educational and socio-economic level than others.

What can we do? We can of course strengthen the social welfare state, with structural and institutional reforms which are more than ever necessary. Educational policy is fundamental, especially by reinforcing primary education, guaranteeing equal opportunities and putting the spotlight on those children in a disadvantaged situation. Once they are adult, active labour policies are also needed. And from health policies, despite their eminently palliative nature, primary and community care is particularly important as is guaranteeing care to all children.

Post written by Anna García-Altés (@annagaal).

Towards research in nursing with a (greater) impact

15 Mar

What is it that makes a particular research have an impact on society beyond the strictly academic and which is truly transformative? Can a whole series of actions be planned in the way that one follows a cooking recipe which leads directly to the desired social impact? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The impact is multifactorial and depends on so many different elements and actors that it is difficult to establish a formula to guarantee it.

However, having said that, the fact that there is research which has a particular social impact does not mean that it is a totally random phenomenon and that there is no way of predicting, facilitating or promoting it. Years ago, from the Research Assessment group at the Agency for Health Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS), and with the help and complicity of the International School on Research Impact Assessment, ISRIA, we identified a series of facilitators with regards the impact of research.

A fundamental facilitator is people, and the values, culture and capacity of leadership they have. Two identical results of research can have different impacts if the capacity of leadership, drive and will to get beyond academic impact is different. But this is still not enough. The strategy, organisation, collaborations and openness that institutions have will be a great facilitator or barrier for the researchers that have carried out the research.

Finally, both people and institutions will need two indispensable elements in order to aspire to having an impact: on the one hand, a close and effective communication with the different social actors that can play a role in transferring the results of research, and on the other, an approach focused on the participation of all these key players.

To paraphrase Confucius when he said “explain it to me and I will forget, show me and maybe I will remember, involve me and I will understand”, it is all about involving all the necessary actors to bring about a real change and make research transformative.

It is in this context that SARIS (Catalan acronym) came into being, the Assessment System of Research and Innovation in Health. It is a strategic tool which emerged from the PERIS (Strategic Plan for Research and Innovation in Health 2016-2020) with the aim of assessing the research carried out in health in Catalonia from the perspective of always wanting to facilitate and influence so that it has an impact beyond academia. To do this, the motivation and involvement of actors has been defined as a key factor for its development.

Last November, we started a series of participative sessions with nurses who were selected from the PERIS 2017 call in which a line of intensification of nursing professionals was financed.

It is important to emphasise that launching this line with nursing research makes full sense for three reasons: on the one hand, one of the thematic priorities of the PERIS is clearly that of “the development of clinical and translational research which facilitates the growth of scientific and technological knowledge, putting special emphasis on primary care agents and research in nursing”. In addition, the PERIS 2017 nursing fund has been the first to come to an end and it was appropriate to address ourselves to them first and foremost.

Last but not least, the conditions in which nursing research is carried out, with patients and their recovery as its central goal, makes it especially appropriate to ensure that this research has a direct impact on health. Hence, it is important that the research done in nursing be capable of demonstrating the impact that this group of professionals has because it can give it a comparative advantage with regards other biomedical disciplines. Indeed, nursing research is intrinsically translational.

Therefore, the first session centred on identifying the influential actors and in empowering the nurse to carry out an effective communication which amplifies the productive interactions needed to transform the results obtained into benefits for a better and improved health for patients.

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the nurses for their participation (readiness and motivation) who attended of their own free will and in their time off work ensuring thus that the session was a success. This demonstrates that from the AQuAS we have leverage to give support to those researchers who are motivated to driving the impact of their research.

At present, we are preparing other sessions that will enable mutual learning between researchers and the assessment agents at the AQuAS.

Post written by Núria Radó Trilla (@nuriarado).

Jornada SARIS: Participación en recerca Barcelona, April 4th 2018.

What are we doing about low-value medical practices?

8 Feb

The aim of the Essencial Project is to improve the quality of healthcare by providing professionals with evidence that is useful for them to make informed decisions in their day to day work.

What is special about this project is that this is done by identifying routine low-value practices in the health system and by using a strategy aimed at avoiding these practices.

Cari Almazán, the person in charge of this project, responds to questions in an interview.

What is the Essencial Project?

It is a project of the Department of Health of Catalonia led by the Agency for Health Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS – its Catalan acronym), in which researchers from the AQuAS, health professionals, scientific societies and the Advisory Board of Patients participate. Each and every one, in their role, work with a clear objective: improving the quality of healthcare using a very specific strategy to identify low-value practices and thereby provide information to professionals to help them avoid doing all the things they do which do not offer any health benefits to the patient.

What is a low-value practice?

In usual medical practice, there are known routines that do not offer any benefit to the patient and it is difficult to understand why these occur but it is even more difficult to try and avoid them. In all likelihood there is a resistance to change and we need to spend a lot of time explaining what this project is about.

How does the Essencial Project work?

It works at different levels and we try to be systematic and transparent. This involves a line of work which includes: identifying low-value practices, finding knowledge (the evidence), informing about and implementing the project.

If a routine does not offer any benefit to the patient, why is it followed?

This is precisely what we ask professionals in primary care, among many other things. The comments “because we have always done it like this” or “because it is a request of the patient” are frequent. There is a certain tendency to want to feel we are being useful, a human one I would say. Both the professional and the patient feel better but on occasion, there is evidence which indicates that this “feeling better” is not accompanied by any benefit for the patient. This is what needs to be explained very carefully.

What role does the Essencial Project have in the day to day activity of a health professional and that of a potential patient?

There are many projects aligned with the initiative to improve the quality of healthcare. In this context, the Essencial Project is a tool of the health system to help health professionals make decisions. The Essencial Project thus aims to be useful to the health system and professionals. In addition, for a potential patient, knowing about this project can also help contribute to their understanding of why a health professional does not recommend a certain diagnostic test or treatment.

I am unsure as to whether the project is aimed at professionals or at citizens.

The Essencial Project is aimed at the entire population. On the one hand, it is aimed at professionals to provide them with this tool, but also at citizens. Why not? Whether citizens want this information is another thing altogether.

Do citizens show an interest in having all this information available to them?

We don’t know, we should ask them. We know of experiences where it is not clear that the information which is given is the information that citizens want but at the AQuAS we believe that sharing knowledge and methodology is an exercise in responsibility.

Who chooses the recommendations?

Cari: They are chosen in collaboration with the different scientific societies. Right now, there is a participative process on the go to prioritise low-value clinical practices in the framework of the Third Conference of Care in Sexual and Reproductive Health. In the Essencial Conference 2017 subjects for recommendation were prioritised based on the participation of the professionals that attended the conference. The idea is that it is the professionals themselves who identify when and where practices of this sort occur.

Who creates the contents of the Essencial Project?

The contents that accompany each recommendation are the result of the participation of many expert professionals in different disciplines. These contents are then validated. In terms of the videos, professionals at the AQuAS along with health professionals produce these which explain the key idea of each recommendation in the first person in an informative manner.

What would you highlight of the Essencial Project?

That we offer every recommendation, the chance to collaborate with health professionals, a bibliography and files for patients in a systematic way. This last idea of files for patients is a subject which we will delve into more deeply shortly from the agency. Perhaps, what I would say is most important here is that all this forms a part of a commitment to bring the culture of assessment and the culture of Choosing Wisely at all levels closer to everyone: the citizenry, professionals and the health system.

Low value clinical practices from the citizenry’s perspective

13 Oct

During the fifth edition of the international Preventing Overdiagnosis Congress, strategies for implementing solutions to avoid overdiagnosis and overuse were addressed based on the available scientific evidence.

In this year’s edition, which was held in Barcelona last year, apart from the involvement of professionals and organisations, patients had the opportunity to actively participate.

Experiences in different healthcare areas were shown in the use of best practices to communicate and to empower patients to achieve a better understanding of shared decisions.

Different world initiatives addressed the best practices to empower citizens in subjects related to low value practices, overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Experiences were shared and a debate was initiated on fundamental subjects such as the communication and participation of patients.

In recent years, the Essencial Project has studied the perspective of health professionals on low value practices, their causes and possible solutions so as to avoid them.

Essencial Project team: Cari Almazán, Johanna Caro, Liliana Arroyo and Hortènsia Aguado

For example, in a previous post, we explained the results of a survey we carried out with professionals in the field of primary care. The results of this survey highlighted the need to involve and empower the population more. Patients are also important decision makers in relation to their needs and in the demand for certain health services. Hence, the project must be accompanied by a communications strategy aimed not only at patients but also at citizens in general.

That is why we, from the Essencial Project, have been interested in finding out the opinion of patients in addition to the perspective of professionals. In the international Preventing Overdiagnosis 2017 Congress we participated explaining how an exploratory first approach was made to identify the beliefs, attitudes and perceptions of patients regarding the most important elements in consultations, low value practices and the essential components of an effective dialogue between professionals and patients. The end purpose of this was to understand the position of people before initiating possible interventions in the citizenry and to determine the most effective communicative tools and channels.

In Catalonia, AQuAS carried out the first exploratory qualitative study at the end of 2016 using a focus group of parents and children assigned to a primary care team. Low value practices in paediatrics are frequently associated with an over-diagnosis regarding antibiotics, bronchodilatadors, antipyretics or imaging tests, among others. These scenarios have been transferred to the debate with patients themselves. In total, seven women, mothers and grandmother of 14 children participated.

The first point of discussion was the most important elements in a consultation with health professionals and it was found that the treatment (29%) and information received (28%) are the most important elements received by professionals (representing approximately 60% of those mentioned). The relationship with the professional comes next (15%, often related to the degree of trust), followed by the feeling that their wishes or needs are met (12%), information requested (9%) and the diagnosis (5%).

The participants did not know the concept of low value practice but did recognise situations of an excessive prescription of medication or the request of unnecessary tests, especially in emergency services and private consultations.

Regarding communication, the participants said they appreciated that professionals communicate in a simple and direct manner, explaining the reasons for decisions. Similarly, that they felt it was important to receive printed information from professionals which they could peruse later at home. They also said they would like more informative sessions or community groups where these types of subjects could be explained to them and so gain more knowledge about these types of practices.

In our context, this is the first exploratory study done to identify low value practices and the communicative strategies of the citizenry, being the start of a series of studies on the population. Nonetheless, one of the limitations with which we find ourselves was that the participation was lower than expected. Although the term ‘low value practices’ is not known, participants identify situations in which they have experienced them.

Similarly, it is important to underline how patients value the treatment and information received as well as the professional-patient relationship. In the same way, patients recognise the need for a professional’s communication skills and the need for tools to support an effective communicative exchange.

Post written by Johanna Caro Mendivelso (@jmcaro103).

Crisis, inequalities and policies: proposed intinerary

7 Sep

Unfortunately, inequalities in health are still an issue today including in our country. The crisis of recent years has once again put the spotlight on this subject.

This is why we propose an itinerary taking us through the different texts which we have published on the subject in this blog and, in particular, we invite you to read the original texts which are mentioned here in more depth, a large proportion of which have been elaborated at the AQuAS.

In September of last year, Luis Rajmil reflected on social inequalities in child health and the economic crisis in this post placing the concepts of equality, equity and reality on the agenda for discussion.

“At present, there is enough accumulated information that shows that life’s course and the conditions of prenatal life as well as life during the first few years are very influential factors in the health and social participation of an adult to come.”

At a later date, the Observatory of the effects of the crisis on the health of the population published its third report but prior to that, a post was published with a collection of individual thoughts and reflections on this subject by Xavier Trabado, Angelina González and Andreu Segura focussing on, respectively, the effects of the crisis on the mental health of people, the coordination of different mechanisms in primary and specialised care, the urgency for community health actions and the need to engage in intersectoral actions.

“It is urgent to put community health processes into action; processes in which the community is the protagonist, which constitute the shift from treating an illness to a bio-psycho-social approach which gives an impulse to intersectoral work in a network with local agents, with who there is the shared aim of improving the community’s well-being. Based on the needs detected and prioritised in a participatory way and with the local assets identified, these processes activate interventions based on evidence which are assessed”

In this other post, Cristina Colls presented an interesting case of the application of scientific evidence to political action which occurred with the revision of the socio-economic dimension of the formula for allocating resources to primary care.

“Social inequality leads to an unbalanced distribution of the population in a territory, concentrating the most serious social problems in certain municipalities or neighbourhoods having higher needs for social and health services than other territories. In this context, more needs to be done where needs are greater if the aim is to guarantee equality in the allocation of resources”

Finally, the most recent post was written by Anna García-Altés and Guillem López-Casanovas. It is a text that provides food for thought based on the latest report published from the Observatory of the Health System of Catalonia on the effects of the crisis on the health of the population.

“Understanding the mechanisms by which social inequalities have an impact on the health of the population, so as to know how best to counter or neutralise them, in any place and at any time, is an issue that must still be addressed by our social policies”

We hope that you this very short itinerary through these texts, initiatives and analyses that aim to be useful in tackling inequalities has been of interest.

Post written by Marta Millaret (@MartaMillaret)

An indicator for a more fairly funded primary care

7 Apr

The Catalan government has recently expressed its willingness to increase the importance ascribed to the socio-economic level of regions when calculating the budget for each primary care team.

This fact invites us to ask ourselves a question: why is it important to bear in mind the economic inequality in the funding of primary care teams?

The influence of socio-economic inequalities on the health of the population is a fact that has been widely studied since the 60s of last century and of which there is evidence both in the international and national context.

We know that people with a lower socio-economic status have more probability of dying before the age of 65 and that they show more physical and mental health problems during their lives. It is logical, therefore, to conclude that they need to make a more intensive use of health resources.

We also know that social inequality is a recipe for an unbalanced distribution of the population in a territory leading to an accumulation of the most serious social problems in specific municipalities or neighbourhoods that have a greater need for social and healthcare than other regions.

It is in this context that more needs to be done where there is greater necessity if equity in the allocation of resources is to be guaranteed. But where should more resources be provided?

The professionals of primary care teams are those closest to the citizen and therefore, have a comprehensive view of the health needs of the population in their territory.

In addition, the primary environment is the reference in prevention activities, in controlling chronic diseases and from which a large part of community activity is coordinated. For all these reasons, the provision for primary care teams must bear in mind the socio-economic conditions of the population they serve.

How can we find out what the socio-economic situation is of territories in which a primary care primary care team works? Many variables exist which give us indirect information (income, occupation, education, housing conditions, among others) but if we are looking for only one classification we need a unique index that synthesises all these aspects; it is what we call a deprivation index.

Deprivation indexes have been widely used as a tool in social policies because they allow an objective prioritisation to be established in small regions, ranging from a low to high socio-economic status. The concept of “deprivation” refers to unmet needs as a result of a lack of resources, not exclusively economic.

All indexes of deprivation are built by adding up the results of different socio-economic status indicators. The weight given to each indicator could be theoretical, that is, based on what a particular indicator is thought to contribute to the phenomenon of deprivation; or otherwise, the result of a multivariate statistical model.

To be able to classify the basic areas of health (reference territories of a primary care team) according to their socio-economic level, AQuAS has built an index called a composite socio-economic status indicator which synthesises seven indicators: population exempt from drug co-payment, population with incomes lower than 18,000€, population with incomes higher than 100,000€, population with manual jobs, population with insufficient educational attainment, premature deaths or potentially avoidable hospitalisations.

The statistical methodology used for calculating this indicator has been that of principal component analysis. The application of this methodology has allowed us to obtain a socio-economic status map of Catalonia.

The application of the composite socio-economic status indicator has been done within the framework of the redefinition of the model of allocation of resources for primary care and has enabled the identification of those primary care teams which will increase their budgets in coming years.

This new model of allocating resources for primary care is an experience in applying scientific evidence to political action.

Post written by Cristina Colls.

PERIS and people: research assessment by AQuAS

30 Mar

The first call of the Strategic Plan for Research and Innovation in Health 2016-2020 (PERIS in Catalan) for funding research and innovation, still pending resolution, prioritizes programmes which foster talent and employability and programmes of excellence in knowledge.

Accordingly, four actions have been initiated by competitive tendering to finance:

The inclusion of scientists and technicians in national research groups
The increase of nursing professionals in order to free up some of their workday so they can do research work
Research projects aimed at primary care
Major programmes focusing on four different subjects: personalised medicine, regenerative medicine, cooperative independent clinical research and cohort studies.

How are the PERIS calls assessed to determine which applications deserve funding?

The criteria for assessment are defined by the order of the requirements, forgive the repetition, and the requirements of each call. This is the instrument that sets out the rules to determine which projects or people are susceptible to receiving finance. Some will always be discarded and, depending on the specific criteria and resources available, others chosen which are considered worthy of funding.

Deciding which criteria to use and how they are assessed/rated/applied is a powerful science policymaking tool to design the research system it aspires to be: excellence, the subject, the discipline, the age of the applicants, the territoriality of the organisations or foreseeable impact are different variables to bear in mind when deciding who is worthy of being able to develop their research.

The Research Team at AQuAS has been commissioned to manage this process of assessment. This is why we accompanied the General Manager for Research and Innovation of the Health Department, Dr Andreu, in the public presentations he gave in different health research institutions linked to hospitals. We were impressed by the attendance at these informative sessions.

The assessment has been done by a panel of experts involving a total of 42 research professionals throughout Catalonia and Spain. It has required intense activity given that more than 490 applications of a very high level were received.

Looking back after having completed the assessment of the this first call, we feel, more than ever, that we made the right decision by putting people in the centre of the PERIS logo, large and circled by a prominent colour.

It is not only the plan itself which has been designed like this, to promote research with people at its centre, involving and motivating a great variety of professional profiles. PERIS has been a catalyst for mobilisation in the health system and in health research, even before the starting gun was fired, as seen in the packed informative presentations and in the involvement of the participants in the assessment panels, working deep into the night.

As can be expected, getting the staff at the Agency for Health Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS) involved, has not been difficult either. We are eager to contribute to this strategic project by using a key tool for selection, accountability, continuous analysis and improvement of opportunities which is what assessment is all about.

Long life to PERIS!

Post written by Núria Radó (@nuriarado) and Paula Adam (@PaulaAdam4).

***Full information available here:

Health data: Do we give citizens what they want?

24 Nov

central-de-resultats-qualitatiu — Dolores Ruiz-Muñoz, Anna García-Altés and Hortènsia Aguado

The right to receive advice with regards to the information available on the network is reflected in the Carta de drets i deures de la ciutadania en relació a la salut i l’atenció sanitària (Citizens Bill of Rights and Duties relating to health and healthcare), updated in 2015. In particular, it specifies that a person has the right to obtain accurate and reliable recommendations from health professionals in terms of the available health information on the network (web pages, applications, etc…).

It is a fact that, from different professional sectors, we are more and more frequently identifying citizens as a key group to take into consideration when communicating the outcomes of our work, including the health sector. The different actors involved in disseminating health information resulting from the Catalan health system activity are no exception. When we publish our data we do it more and more in a way that is not only aimed at informing health professionals on the one hand but also at being accountable to citizens as end users.

But have we really asked citizens what information they want to obtain from us?

From the Results Centre of the Catalan Health System Observatory we publish a series of reports annually with quantitative indicators that aim to measure, assess and disseminate the results obtained in the different areas of the public health system. Up to the present, to disseminate this information beyond the comfort zone of the health sector, we have published a series of infographics with the information that we have considered to be most relevant for citizens, making the effort to create a user friendly format.

During the first semester of 2016, we spent time reflecting on our labour and we realised that we did not in fact know whether what we were publishing for citizens really reached or interested them. We did not even know what it was that citizens wanted to receive from us. To answer these questions we carried out a qualitative study of Catalan citizens to find out what their needs for health information were, but not limiting ourselves to that produced by the Results Centre.

We created three discussion groups and invited citizens randomly selected from Registre Central d’Assegurats del CatSalut (CatSalut’s Central Registry of the Insured) to freely express what they felt their necessities for health information were. What we discovered was that the population is not interested in receiving health information in a general or systematic way but rather only wants health information when they have a specific personal need and which is directly related to what is affecting them at a given time. They are not interested, therefore, in receiving health information about the population as a whole nor of how the health system works. They state that this information is necessary but feel it is health professionals who need to have it and know how to manage it. In this way, they place their trust in the health system by dissociating themselves from this type of information.

Furthermore, they consider it of interest that the information be made available on the networks but state that, whether they actively search for it on the internet or not, what they need is to be able to contrast the information at a later stage with their primary care physician or specialist, and that it be this professional who discerns what the best information available is for each occasion. What is more, they clearly identify this professional as being the person who needs to know the health information produced systematically by the Catalan health system.

We presented the results of this study at a recent congress, to be exact, the XXXIV Congress of the Spanish Society for the Quality of Healthcare and the XXI Congress of the Andalusian Society for the Quality of Healthcare, generating a very interesting posterior debate regarding these results. One of the attendees at the congress stated their concern for the fact that citizens were not interested in receiving general health information. The debate centred on how we could educate the population into showing an interest in this information and on how to make it reach them. We believe that the key underlying question here is whether this need be done at all.

The public at large have an overwhelming amount of information at their disposal on an infinite number of different subjects on a daily basis. It seems clear that when a person has a specific need regarding their state of health they consult a professional in whom they trust. It is obvious that to us, as healthcare professionals, we will always feel that the information we produce is of such interest as to make others want to know about it, but it is also probable that our enthusiasm makes us biased when interpreting reality. We should perhaps ask ourselves whether we need to make the effort to provide the public with information they say they do not need nor interests them, and whether we are prepared to accept their decision and respect it.

Post written by Dolores Ruiz-Muñoz, Anna García-Altés and Hortènsia Aguado.

The “perfect” health system

20 Oct

Mark Britnell is an international expert in health systems having held several senior positions in the NHS and currently provides consulting services for several countries. With this wealth of experience, Britnell wrote a book in 2015 with the inspiring title of, In search of the perfect health care system (1). In it, Britnell examines the dilemmas facing governments, the global challenges such as demographic, epidemiological, technological and economic transitions, as well as the more specific cases facing each country.

A significant portion of the book, more than half, is dedicated to examining individual countries grouped by continent: the Asian region including Australia (with large countries from Japan, China and India, to small densely populated enclaves such as Singapore and Hong Kong) Africa and the Middle East (just three very different examples such as Qatar, Israel and South Africa), Europe (from Portugal to Russia via the Nordic countries, Germany, Italy, France and the English) and the Americas (from the north; Canada, USA and Mexico and the south, such as Brazil). Too bad that the section on the Iberian Peninsula only speaks of our western neighbours (the eastern side but a general walk through).

There is no questioning that Britnells’ knowledge has been acquired first hand, given his worldwide expertise in conferences and consultancy. As the author mentions, he is often asked which country has the best health care system? Since the WHO report, Health systems: Improving performance (2), published in 2000, several country rankings have been published according to the assessment of their health systems using a variety of methodologies and outcomes. The table below serves as an example.

pons-comparison-health-systems

Nowadays, rankings proliferate as can be seen in universities and research institutions/centres. The indicators may be different, but it seems that one may always end up finding the most favourable ranking for them. Catalan public universities are a good example, given that centre advertises their position – besides that of excellence in comparison to other universities which are not necessarily British – in the ranking system which makes it stand out to a greater degree that other Catalan universities.

Britnell, getting back to our point, after so many rankings, lectures and consulting, make a proposal on what the best health system might be by taking the best areas from the different countries. If the world could have a perfect health system, it would have to possess the following characteristics:

–   Universal healthcare values (UK)
–   Primary health care (Israel)
–   Community services (Brazil)
–   Mental health and welfare (Australia)
–   Promoting health (Scandinavian countries)
–   Empowerment of patients and communities (certain African nations)
–   Research and development (USA)
–   Innovation and new ways of doing things (India)
–   IT and Communication technologies (Singapore)
–   The capacity of choice (France)
–   Funding (Switzerland)
–   Care for the elderly (Japan)

References

(1) Britnell M. In Search of the Perfect Health System. London (United Kingdom): Palgrave Macmillan Education ; 2015.

(2) The World Health Report 2000. Health systems: improving performance. Geneva (Switzerland): World Health Organization (WHO); 2000.

(3) Where do you get the most for your health care dollar?. Bloomberg Visual Data; 2014.

(4) Davis K, Stremikis K, Squires D, Schoen C. 2014 Update. Mirror, mirror on the wall. How the performance of the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally. New York, NY (US): The Commonwealth Fund; 2014.

(5) Health outcomes and cost: A 166-country comparison. Intelligence Unit. The Economist; 2014.

Post written by Joan MV Pons.