Integrated care services: lessons learned from the deployment of the NEXES project.

OBJECTIVES: To identify barriers to deployment of four articulated Integrated Care Services supported by Information Technologies in three European sites. The four services covered the entire spectrum of severity of illness. The project targeted chronic patients with obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiac failure and/or type II diabetes mellitus.
SETTING: One health care sector in Spain (Barcelona) (n = 11.382); six municipalities in Norway (Trondheim) (n = 450); and one hospital in Greece (Athens) (n = 388).
METHOD: The four services were: (i) Home-based long-term maintenance of rehabilitation effects (n = 337); (ii) Enhanced Care for frail patients, n = 1340); (iii) Home Hospitalization and Early Discharge (n = 2404); and Support for remote diagnosis (forced spirometry testing) in primary care (Support) (n = 8139). Both randomized controlled trials and pragmatic study designs were combined. Two technological approaches were compared. The Model for Assessment of Telemedicine applications was adopted.
RESULTS: The project demonstrated: (i) Sustainability of training effects over time in chronic patients with obstructive pulmonary disease (p < 0.01); (ii) Enhanced care and fewer hospitalizations in chronic respiratory patients (p < 0.05); (iii) Reduced in-hospital days for all types of patients (p < 0.001) in Home Hospitalization/Early Discharge; and (iv) Increased quality of testing (p < 0.01) for patients with respiratory symptoms in Support, with marked differences among sites.
CONCLUSIONS: The four integrated care services showed high potential to enhance health outcomes with cost-containment. Change management, technological approach and legal issues were major factors modulating the success of the deployment. The project generated a business plan to foster service sustainability and health innovation. Deployment strategies require site-specific adaptations.

Introduction

The Chronic Care model [1] is widely accepted as a conceptual framework to effectively address the burden of Non-Communicable Diseases [2], with Integrated Care Services being one of its core components. However, the practical deployment and extensive adoption of integrated care remain a challenge [3]. Both conceptual traits [4] and practical recommendations [5] of the Chronic Care model were adopted for the design of the current research.

In 2008, the European Union project NEXES [6] was initiated to assess the deployment of four Integrated Care Services supported by Information and Communication Technologies in three sites: Spain (Barcelona), Norway (Trondheim) and Greece (Athens) with different profiles. The underlying common hypothesis was that the transfer of care complexities from hospital-based care to the community using a patient-centred management approach could enhance health outcomes with associated cost-containment. The NEXES project in Barcelona [7] and in Trondheim [8] should be considered as a preliminary initiative of the regional deployment of integrated care.

The four Integrated Care Services evaluated in the project included: Home-based maintenance of rehabilitation effects (wellness and rehabilitation); Enhanced Care for frail patients to prevent hospitalizations; Home Hospitalization and Early Discharge; and Support to remote diagnosis in Primary Care. These four services were chosen because their adequate articulation could cover the longitudinal care requirements of the entire spectrum of severity of chronic patients. Consequently, patients could be at the centre of care.

The original aim of NEXES was to assess the role of technology on the deployment of integrated care; but it evolved towards the evaluation of the effects and barriers for adoption of the four services. It is of note that efficacy of two of the services: Enhanced Care to prevent hospitalizations [9] and Home Hospitalization and Early Discharge [10] had been already demonstrated in two randomized controlled trials conducted in Barcelona well before the project's initiation; whereas the other two services: Home-based maintenance of rehabilitation effects and Support to remote diagnosis were designed for assessment within NEXES. Consequently, evaluation of effectiveness, sustainability and transferability at the European level of these four services were relevant aims in the NEXES project.

The current manuscript describes the deployment process of the four services, as well as their potential for cost-containment. Moreover, it addresses key strategic aspects, namely: service design, organizational aspects, technology, ethical issues and reimbursement modalities, all of which may be useful for a site specific deployment of an IT-supported integrated model of care.

Material and method

Service model

We define an Integrated Care Service as a set of well standardized tasks to be provided to a patient on the basis of his/her health condition and social circumstances. The aim is to achieve target objectives aligned with a comprehensive treatment plan. Two differential characteristics of this approach compared to usual care are: (i) its patient centeredness; and (ii) the longitudinal nature of the interventions. The duration of the interventions is dependent on the type of Integrated Care Service provided. One patient can be assigned to one or more integrated care services within a given time frame, depending upon his/her individual needs.

Table 1 summarizes outstanding characteristics of the three health systems and the specificities of each site in the project. A high level description of the four Integrated Care Services supported by technology, using a Business Process Management Notation [11], can be found in the online supplementary material, Figures 2S–6S.

Table 1.

Main characteristics of the sites

M, man; W, women; GDP, gross domestic product; Suppl., supplemental; RCTS, randomized controlled trials; ICT, information and communications technology; HI, health information.

Figure 2S.

Wellness and Rehabilitation

Clinically stable chronic patients (cardiac, respiratory and/or type II diabetes mellitus), at different disease stages, that are eligible for an endurance training program are included into Wellness & Rehabilitation through formal (primary care or specialized care) or informal care (health center, pharmacy offices) providers. Basic assessments at entry into the service are conducted in order to define the work plan based on clinical characteristics, baseline aerobic capacity and adherence profile. Skills and acceptability of supporting technology for the non-supervised period of the program are also evaluated. The patient is then included into a supervised training program (3 to 8 weeks of duration). At the end of the supervised training period, he/she is included into the Integrated Care Service for community-based remotely assisted wellness program managed using his/her personal health folder. Additional supporting technology can be added depending upon requirements and patient's skills. During this non-supervised period, the patient has access to health professionals through the personal health folder and the call center (see text and reference [5] for further details).

Figure 6S.

Support to remote diagnosis in Primary Care (Support_2)

Role of Pharmacy Offices (Community Pharmacy) in a Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease case finding program. The figure depicts the process of a citizen/customer attending a Community Pharmacy where he/she sees a banner inviting participation in a respiratory health status assessment program. If the citizen decides to apply, then the Community Pharmacy officer will administer the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease questionnaire to assess health status. If risk factors are identified, the citizen will be invited to perform a pre-bronchodilator Forced Spirometry testing carried out by the Community Pharmacy officer. Regarding the quality of the testing, there are three possible outcomes: i) the Forced Spirometry testing is qualified as high quality and it will be certified as such by the automatic algorithm and forwarded to the regionally shared Electronic Health Records (or “Catalan Electronic Health Records” (Historia Clinica Compartida de Catalunya); ii) the Forced Spirometry testing does not fulfil quality criteria. Then, automatic feedback with specific info on the problem is forwarded to the Community Pharmacy officer while the patient is still on site. Consequently, the Community Pharmacy officer will have the opportunity to solve the problem and generate a high-quality Forced Spirometry test; and, iii) approximately 12% of the Forced Spirometry testing will be classified as undefined by the automatic algorithm and forwarded to the specialist for advice. The specialist will provide remote off-line recommendations directly to the Community Pharmacy officer and the certified Forced Spirometry testing will be forwarded simultaneously to the regionally shared Electronic Health Records The citizen's flow in the case of high-quality Forced Spirometry testing can be as follows: i) Normal Forced Spirometry testing: the Community Pharmacy officer will generate a report on paper giving tests results and advice about stopping smoking; ii) Abnormal Forced Spirometry results: the Community Pharmacy officer will generate a report on paper advising the subject to contact his/her general practitioner, who will have access to the certified Forced Spirometry testing through the “Catalan Electronic Health Records” (Historia Clinica Compartida de Catalunya); and iii) Undefined results (12% of the testing): the subject will be informed of the specialist's advice by the Community Pharmacy officer.

Integrated care services

Wellness and rehabilitation

Main objectives of this service [12] were twofold: (i) to achieve long-term sustainability of the training-induced increase of aerobic capacity in clinically stable chronic patients; and (ii) to empower patients for self-management with enhanced daily physical activity and healthier life-styles. All patients were studied at baseline, immediately after an 8-week endurance training programme and at the end of at least 12-month follow-up. After the endurance training programme, the patients were allocated, in a non-randomized manner (Barcelona and Greece), either to intervention (integrated care) or to control (usual care) groups. In Norway, the study was conducted as an individual randomized controlled trial with a 1:1 intervention to control ratio (Table 2). Target variables were aerobic capacity (six minutes walking test) [13], health-related quality of life [14, 15] and daily-life activities (modified Baecke's Questionnaire) [16].

Table 2.

Summary of the field studies assessing the four integrated care services

Number of patients within parenthesis.

COPD, chronic patients with obstructive pulmonary disease; W&R, Wellness and Rehabilitation; EC, Enhanced Care; EC-Prevention Admissions, Prevention of Admissions; EC-LTOT, Long-term Oxygen Therapy; HH/ED, Home hospitalization and Early Discharge; Support, Remote support for diagnosis; 8-w T + Xm, 8-week Training programme and follow-up after training; PHF, Personal Health Folder; ICT, Information and Communication Technology; RCT, Randomized Controlled Trials; SaO2, oxygen saturation pulse oximetry; SMS, Short Message Service; e-Messing and Bi-m calls, messaging services using ELIN platform; IT, Information Technology; HAD, Anxiety & Depression; SGRQ, Saint George Respiratory Questionnaire; ED, Emergency Department; web-based Forum Clinic, web-based patient education; CDSS, Clinical Decision Support System.

Enhanced care for frail chronic patients

In Barcelona, this service was addressed using a three-step approach, as indicated in Table 2. First, we performed a randomized controlled trial assessing effectiveness of prevention of hospitalizations in high risk patients [6]. Thereafter, the site deployed this service as mainstream care in the Integrated Care Unit and later in the Respiratory Department. Finally, we performed a cross-sectional study on patients under Long-term Oxygen Therapy to explore specific functional requirements for the management of frail/complex patients in the community. We identified this niche of patients as representative of the complex transactions among all community stakeholders involved in an integrated care scenario [6]. In Norway and in Greece, this service was assessed using cluster and individual randomized controlled trial designs, respectively.

Home hospitalization and early discharge

This service provided an acute, home-based, short-term intervention aiming at fully (Home Hospitalization) or partially (Early Discharge) substituting home care for conventional hospitalization. In Barcelona [6], Home Hospitalization/Early Discharge was deployed as a mainstream service with a real world approach. The service was delivered by trained hospital personnel for a period of time usually not longer than the expected length of hospital stay for the patient's diagnostic-related groups. Target variables in the study were early-readmission rates (30 days) and mortality (Table 2). The Home Hospitalization/ Early Discharge service was assessed as a small randomized controlled trial in Greece. This service could not be deployed in Norway due to organizational factors, as described below.

Support for remote diagnosis

The service [17] was conceived as a programme to cut across all areas with the potential to transfer specialized diagnostic capabilities into primary care settings. The studies were initiated using a novel approach providing remote web-based support to primary care settings to achieve high-quality forced spirometry. Eligible subjects were patients with respiratory symptoms who visited Primary Care, and adults at risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, who were offered the test in pharmacy offices (Table 2). The main target variables were achievement of high-quality testing, accessibility to quality-certified testing across the health system and cost savings. In Norway, the service was implemented as a small observational study assessing the potential for performing eco-cardiography with portable equipment in primary care [18].The deployment of the service was not included in the Greek programme because of the characteristics of the primary care setting in the country.

Characteristics of the three sites

The sites were selected because of three main factors: (i) all of them had a highly motivated leading team willing to explore the complexities of the transition towards integrated care; (ii) represented heterogeneous and characteristic scenarios, as reported below and in Table 1; and (iii) were located in different areas of Europe. The heterogeneity of the sites generated additional complexities during the project development, but it enriched the potential for generalization of the results.

Barcelona

The driver of the transfer of complexity was a tertiary public hospital (Hospital Clinic), which had previously set-up a system of coordinated care in one of the four health sectors of the city of Barcelona. NEXES was developed in close alignment with the Health Plan designed by the Department of Health of the Catalan Government [7].

Health information sharing platform

Barcelona developed and deployed an open Health Information Sharing platform, Linkcare®, during the project lifetime [19]. Technological delays in the development of wireless mobile technology were the main cause of the pragmatic design of Wellness and Rehabilitation in Barcelona.

Organizational setting

Barcelona adopted a building blocks strategy following the principles of the Chronic Care Model [4, 5] and recommendations made by the World Health Organization [4, 5]. Health professionals engaged in the project were those directly involved in the field studies with a leading role of the Integrated Care Unit of the Hospital Clinic. The development of the project was parallel with an extensive workforce reengineering process that was taking place in the health care sector which did not negatively influence the project's organizational setting.

Trondheim

The driver for the change in Norway were primary care professionals. NEXES was deployed in the Central Norwegian Region Health Area, at the time of the preparatory phase of Norway's Coordination Reform [8].

Health information exchange platform

The ELIN-K® platform was the technological solution used in Norway. It was built on the National framework for messaging and the National secure health net [8]. It is a closed and secure system that connects all health care providers and electronic health record systems. The basic functionality of the ELIN-K® in NEXES was information exchange through electronic messaging across health care providers.

Organizational settings

The NEXES team in Trondheim adopted an implementation approach that included simultaneous actions in the different dimensions of the nationwide reform that the Norwegian government was introducing, as described in detail in the “Results” section. In Trondheim, there was an extensive involvement in the project of all the primary care professionals working in the six municipalities that deployed the field studies.

Athens

The driver for Greece was a tertiary hospital in Athens, and the IT-supported integrated care services were assessed with small trials related to two main factors: the lack of a fully operational Hospital Information System and the absence of an active governmental plan for deployment of coordinated care nationwide.

Technological platform

A simplified version of the Linkcare® platform with no interoperability with corporative electronic health records was used.

Clinical action was taken by a small group of highly qualified and motivated professionals from one large public hospital and one small company devoted to homecare services. The implementation of the services with technological support was done at pilot level.

Study design and assessment

The initial assessment plan of the NEXES project included randomized controlled trial designs for each of the four services with separate data analysis by site and joint analysis of the three sites for each service. The sample size calculation [20] at site level was obtained considering an intervention to control ratio of 1:1 accepting an alpha risk of 0.05 and a beta risk of 0.20 in a two-sided test and anticipating a drop-out rate of 0.15. However, several barriers that emerged in the very early phases of the project precluded deployment of specific services in Norway and in Greece. Likewise, a pragmatic design for some services was adopted in Barcelona. Deviations from the initial assessment plans, as well as the associated reasons, are described below and summarized in Table 2.

All patients included in the project signed the informed consent after full explanation of the characteristics of the integrated care service administered. Ethical approval was granted by the Ethical Committees from each site. The Model for Assessment of Telemedicine applications [21] was chosen for a systematic analysis and description of outputs for NEXES.

Statistical analysis

Quantitative analyses of outcomes for each integrated care service were only conducted separately by site. As described above, deviations from the original assessment plan (Table 2) precluded evaluation of each service at project level. Results are expressed as mean ± SD or percentages (%). Distribution of the variables was assessed. Comparison of baseline characteristics between groups was done using parametric or non-parametric tests depending upon the distribution of the variables. Effectiveness of the intervention was tested by comparing outcome variables between intervention and control groups. A cost analysis, direct costs only, of the services was performed and compared to usual care. Analyses were carried out using the statistical package SPSS version 18.0. All analyses were based on bilateral hypotheses with statistical significance set below 0.05.

Ethical and regulatory issues of technology in the three sites

We focused on the analysis of the European legislation on health data transfer and security, as well as legislative differences by country [22, 23]. The specifics of the sites were analysed with particular emphasis on their potential impact on the deployment of the four IT-supported integrated care services.

RESULTS

Assessment of the four integrated care services

The section presents a narrative summary of the overall evidence obtained from the four information technology-supported integrated care services with a global project perspective (Tables 2 and 3). A detailed description of workflows, characteristics of the intervention and outcomes for each service can be found in the online supplementary material.

Table 3.

Summary of MAST assessment

aLegal frame was a limiting factor in Norway as explained in Lessons Learned.

The service demonstrated long-term sustainability of training-induced enhancement of aerobic capacity and had a significant positive impact on life style using simple and robust off-line technological support including the personal health channel as a technological tool to enhance patient adherence to the programme, as described in detail in a previous report [12]. It is of note that the Wellness and Rehabilitation service did not show significant positive effects in two of the sites: Greece and Norway, due to cultural and economic factors not related with the characteristics of the intervention, as discussed below.

Enhanced care

The initial randomized controlled trial assessing prevention of hospitalizations in high risk patients [6] showed positive health outcomes in Barcelona and Greece, but not in Norway. Moreover, the deployment of the service as mainstream care in Barcelona generated cost-containments, as indicated in Figure 1S in the online supplementary material. We also identified a high potential for synergies with all NEXES services. The cross-sectional study on patients under Long-term Oxygen Therapy [6] assessed the health status of these patients and identified their health care requirements. The results of the study set the basis for community-based regional deployment of integrated care services for frail chronic patients. Overall, the analysis of the Enhanced Care results recommends the deployment of four different integrated care services under the umbrella of the programme, that is: (i) Prevention of Hospitalization in frail chronic patients with high risk for admissions, as assessed in the project; (ii) Transitional support after hospital discharge; (iii) Community-based integrated care service for clinically stable frail chronic patients; and (iv) Palliative care.

Figure 1S.

30-day readmissions

Comparison of 30-d readmission rates for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, expressed as percentages, between the Catalan region, the Hospital Clinic and the Integrated Care Unit at Hospital Clinic (see text for details).

In Barcelona, the deployment of the HH/ED as mainstream service clearly showed that substitution of conventional admissions by home-based hospitalizations should be considered as an option for a high percentage of a wide spectrum of patients that are candidates for tertiary care hospitalization. The service reduced costs both for the health care provider and at the health system level. The small randomized controlled trial carried out in Greece also showed positive outcomes (Table 2). It is of note that Home Hospitalization/Early Discharge was not conducted in Norway because of the obstacles encountered at site level. Briefly, the interplay of three factors: (i) insufficient culture of cooperation between hospital and community-based teams; (ii) existence of two public payers; and (iii) lack of IT tools supporting collaborative work between carers precluded the deployment of the service in Norway.

Support to remote diagnosis

The service generated a mature framework for regional deployment aimed at achieving high-quality Forced Spirometry testing in primary care and accessibility to certified forced spirometry testing among service providers across health care tiers [17]. In Norway, this service also showed positive results (Table 2) [18].

Key results

Overall, the four integrated care services assessed in the project showed high potential to enhance health outcomes with cost-containment. Moreover, safety, acceptability and transferability of the services (Tables 2 and 3) support their potential for large-scale deployment. The following aspects should be highlighted:

The level of evidence on effectiveness raised in NEXES was uneven for the different services. It is of note that assessment of both wellness and rehabilitation and community-based enhanced care requires further research.

The observed synergies among different services indicate the need for their implementation in an articulated manner. However, deployment strategies should be adapted to the specificities of the site.

The standardization of the services’ workflows [19] in the current research facilitates comparability with other deployment experiences

Lessons learned for the regional deployment

Table 4 displays a decalogue of items that are recommended for regional adoption of integrated care. Findings of our study related to the Model for Assessment of Telemedicine applications dimensions [21] are described below.

Table 4.

Recommendations for regional deployment of Integrated Care

Technological aspects

The electronic messaging system supported by ELIN-K® fulfilled the legal requirements imposed by the Norwegian legislation, but it showed clear limitations in its ability to support the type of communication among stakeholders across health care tiers required in an integrated care scenario. In contrast, the Health Information Sharing approach [6], Linkcare®, because of its capabilities to embed the service process logic, demonstrated high potential to support the new model of care. Moreover, NEXES provided evidence for the transition from a Health Information Exchange platform to a Health Information Sharing approach required for successful deployment of integrated care [6].

The project also indicated that tele-monitoring should be envisaged as a useful supporting component of a technological approach that must be integrated into the clinical process and modulated by clinical needs. Both patients and professionals showed high degrees of satisfaction with IT functionalities supporting collaborative tools for specific programmes (i.e. mobile videoconferencing and the personal health folder) [6]. The architecture and functionalities of the technological platform developed in Barcelona [19] proved to be a relevant component for the success of the deployment of integrated care, as conceived in the service model depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Service model. The family of four Integrated Care Services deployed in NEXES with support of Information and Communication Technologies exemplifies the health paradigm based on longitudinal patient-centred care structured to achieve well-defined objectives with a continuum across the different layers indicated in the figure. Implicit in the model there are shared agreements among actors involving: informal (community) and formal care (primary care and hospital), as well as social support services. Enhanced accessibility of active patients/caregivers and collaborative work among professionals are basic characteristics of the model (see text for further details on the different Integrated Care Services supported by Information and Communication Technologies).

Organizational setting

The deployment strategies undertaken in Trondheim and in Barcelona were markedly different and this had significant consequences for measuring the project outcomes at each site. The NEXES programme in Barcelona was only focused on the assessment of the four integrated care services and it was primarily run through the Integrated Care Unit of the Hospital Clinic. This is a transversal unit supporting specific hospital-based programmes such as Home Hospitalization/Early Discharge and facilitates the bridging between hospital and community care settings, thus fostering the transfer of care complexity from specialized to community care. The setting in Barcelona allowed a focused approach to the specificities of the NEXES aims. In contrast, because of Trondheim's nationwide leadership in Norwegian Health Reform, the team undertook an ambitious programme with simultaneous action in four main areas: (i) deployment of the four services, (ii) implementation of the Health Information Exchange platform; (iii) organizational changes and preparation of the workforce, including dissemination of both clinical and technological models nationwide; and (iv) pioneering the transfer of public hospital care funding from the state to the local authorities for enhanced community care of chronic patients.

Ethical and regulatory issues

The Norwegian legislation on data privacy and transfer was identified as a major limitation for the deployment of integrated care in Trondheim, both in terms of the technological approach and design of the clinical interventions. Nevertheless, the project triggered an initiative in the Norwegian Parliament to promote legal changes to facilitate the future deployment of integrated care.

Interestingly, the review of the current European Union legislation on health data sharing did not identify other countries with major limitations for the deployment of integrated care. We observed, however, that sharing of existing standardized data transfer procedures from on-going deployment experiences can favourably contribute to the process of adoption of integrated care.

Reimbursement of services and the business model for regional deployment

The four integrated care services assessed in the project showed favourable cost-effectiveness ratios. These positive results were largely due to the avoidance of costly institutional care (hospital admissions) and the transferring of complex services to community providers.

The process of deployment of the integrated care services led to an enrichment of the entire health care value chain with new roles for the existing providers and the emergence of new participants that may generate additional opportunities for team development. The proposed business model (Figure 2) should rely on the relationships of the two core types of stakeholders: (i) the payer(s) and (ii) the health care providers covering different health care tiers. The other components of the value chain (industrial, integrators, operators, etc.) should interact through mainstream health care providers. In systems with two (Norway) or more public payers, strategic agreements favouring a health system vision of the business model are highly advised.

Figure 2.

Expected initial effects of the introduction of Bundled Systems with shared risks. The top portion of the left triangle (discontinuous line) indicates the per cent of hospital expenditure (–17%) that can be transferred to the community as Integrated Care Services. Those services are less intensive and less expensive. It will likely enlarge the top portion of the left figure (>17%) narrowing its base (<83%) in order to achieve aggregate cost savings and better margins (for a given reimbursement rate). The right figure displays the expected changes at provider's level after reorganization through Integrated Care Services supported by Information and Communication Technologies. The provider would have broader incentives to achieve savings over time (arrows), so that margins stay larger or increase.

NEXES thoroughly analysed the expected impact of different modalities of reimbursement on the deployment of integrated care services assessing the effects on the business case, their role as incentives for adoption and their potential for generalization at a health system level. Finally, payments by activity and by capitation were discarded, with proposed payments by outcomes using a bundled approach with specific features to ensure service adoption and the take-up of appropriate technological investments (Figure 2). Bundled payment should be perceived as a way to incentivize collaboration among providers in order to move to less intensive and expansive care that would result in better health outcomes. Health care providers would have broader incentives to achieve savings, so that the margins are kept or may even increase. Technological innovation is thus considered part of the bundled payment and not a specific reimbursable charge in the proposed model. The payer would seek an overall reduction in the health care expenditure bill, so that the bundled payment, in the context of a shared-risk scenario, could provide a cost reduction with better quality of care, moving beyond specific interests of any one component of the system.

The business model generated by NEXES was conceived as a recommendation that requires further validation. The aim of the proposal was to facilitate scalability of the deployment of integrated care at health system level. The transfer of approximately 20% of hospital budgetary resources to the community (primary care and convalescence centres) was proposed by the Norwegian Ministry of Health within the Coordination Reform [8]. Likewise, a figure close to 17% is also supported by the literature [24] (Figure 2).

DISCUSSION

Relevant findings

The three major achievements of the NEXES project were, first, the demonstration of the effectiveness of IT-supported integrated care services (Tables 2 and 3), with its high potential for cost-containment and complementariness of the deployment of integrated care services assessed in NEXES. The four services should be considered together as a suite of community-based integrated care services covering the spectrum of severity of chronic patients, from citizens at risk through onset of illness to end-stages of disease (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Positioning Integrated Care Services supported by Information and Communication Technologies in chronic patients across time. The four Services were conceived as articulated services covering most of the complexities of chronic patients during the lifetime period. Functional decline overtime and occurrence of exacerbations are common features in chronic patients, acknowledging that both rate of progress and frequency/severity of acute episodes may show large variations among individuals and the characteristics of the predominant disease(s). The different Services can be administered alone or in combination, with different intensities/duration and also different purposes, as displayed. For example, the support to remote diagnosis (S) can be used either for initial diagnosis or for monitoring during the follow-up period.

A second achievement was that NEXES demonstrated the relevant role of the technological platform to adapt the services at regional/country levels with strong recommendations for an open source Health Information Sharing approach [19]. Third, the project identified a high degree of transferability of these services and formulated structured strategies adapted to site characteristics that can facilitate regional adoption of integrated care with technological support across Europe.

The project also delineated a realistic and sustainable business model based on bundled payments, with shared-risk fostering investments in integrated care supported by technological innovation with no further increase in the overall health care expenditures.

Contributions to deployment of integrated care

We acknowledge that the level of maturity of the deployment of the different services was heterogeneous. While Wellness and Rehabilitation should be considered in a pilot stage [12], further multicenter validation through a formal cost-effectiveness analysis is needed. In contrast, Home Hospitalization/ Early Discharge [6] and Enhanced Care for prevention of hospitalizations [6] are already mainstream services at our Hospital Clinic, even though other services under the umbrella of Enhanced Care are still in a development phase [6]. Finally, we must highlight the potential of Support Services for remote diagnosis, as it is currently being deployed in the entire Catalan region [17, 25, 26] and almost fully adopted by the Basque Country [27].

We understand that both positive and negative results obtained in the current study have facilitated the identification of modifiable elements and contributed to delineation of site specific deployment strategies aimed at shortening the gap of 7–10 years [28] often seen between initiation of deployment projects and the generation of positive outcomes leading to wide adoption.

The Comparative Effectiveness Research [29] orientation as applied in the project was adapted using the characteristics of the multilevel interventions (clinical, organizational, technological, legal, financial, etc.) in the complex heterogeneous health systems [30]. We believe that the evidence generation process and patient-oriented approach, even with a lack of homogeneous study designs among sites that prohibited joint analyses, support the strength of conclusions obtained with the pragmatic approach chosen for this project.

There are increasing publications generating valuable contributions [31-33] towards the deployment of integrated care services. It is of note that previous deployment experiences, when carried out by a single health care provider, do not generate sufficient evidence for generalization of results to other settings due to the homogeneity of the patients and providers [34-36]. Likewise, the design and results of a recent large randomized control trial, the Whole System Demonstrator [37], conducted in the UK cannot be applied to the entire population. We need expanded information obtained from real world deployment experiences with large heterogeneous groups, like NEXES, to provide evidence for generalization at the European level.

Regional adoption at European level

The on-going transition towards an integrated care approach in several European Union regions is currently stimulated by three main driving forces. The trigger is, with no doubt, the burden imposed by the epidemics of chronic diseases [2]. But, two additional vectors are accelerating disruptive changes in health care, namely: the need for generating efficiencies allowing further investments for innovation of health care services without increasing overall health costs; and, of equal importance, the paradigm change in understanding the underlying mechanisms of chronic diseases [38-40]. The articulation and site adaptation of the different dimensions analysed in the current research should facilitate the initiatives aiming at regional adoption of this new IT-supported integrated model of care. In the process, however, two factors may likely influence the long-term success of the regional deployment. One of them is the success in implementation of the proposed business model (Figure 2). We acknowledge that the development of a shared-risk approach based on bundled payments may require appropriate interplay between changes in reimbursement policies and research to build-up applicability of the new concepts. Consequently, a transitional phase towards development of the new business models should be envisaged and designed by addressing the dominant barriers at each site. Moreover, the analysis of viability of the business model proposed by NEXES should take into account a recent report indicating that bundle payments applied in a disease-oriented approach resulted in significantly increased costs [41]. A second major element is the need to generate valid tools for long-term assessment of the deployment process (see online supplementary material). In this regard, recent on-going EU initiatives [42] may provide relevant outcomes in this field.

Conclusions

The research demonstrated that appropriately articulated integrated care services for chronic patients show high potential to enhance health outcomes with cost-containment. Standardization of service workflows facilitates comparability among deployment experiences. Our results identified: technological approach, change management strategy, business plan and legal issues as relevant factors to define site specific strategies for large scale deployment of integrated care. We believe that the project outcomes represent an important contribution towards adoption of integrated care services for chronic patients in Europe.

Table 1S.

Cost analysis of the HH/ED program in Athens

Early discharge (ED); Home Hospitalization (HH)