Ethical challenges and principles in integrated care.

INTRODUCTION: Integrated care is an established approach to delivery in parts of the healthcare infrastructure, and an ideal which, it is claimed, should be realized system-wide. Its ethical weight derives from its defence of a view about how healthcare ought to operate. Although the goal of integration is laudable, it is ethically and practically complex, involving trade-offs. SOURCES OF DATA: Considerable evidence attests to widespread enthusiasm for integration, given the need to prevent harm and extend the reach of scarce resources. Equally, evidence increasingly highlights the obstacles to successfully translating this ideal into practice. AREAS OF AGREEMENT: The principle that healthcare should be seamless, ensuring that patients do not come to harm through gaps in care enjoys broad agreement. There is a similar consensus that placing the patient's perspective at the centre of decision-making is vital, since this enables identification of these gaps. AREAS OF CONTROVERSY: Integrating care by making it seamless entails blurring boundaries of care domains. This risks undermining the locus of responsibility for care decisions via confusion about who has ownership of specialist knowledge where domains overlap. There is a lack of consensus about how successful integration should be measured. GROWING POINTS: More research into the relative cost-effectiveness of upstream public health investment in preventing chronic ill-health caused by modifiable lifestyle factors vs integrating care for people already ill; further research into ethical implications of integration in practice, which can be obscured by the simplicity of the fundamental normative principle guiding integration in theory.

Ethical challenges of integration across primary and secondary care: a qualitative and normative analysis.

BACKGROUND: This paper explores ethical concerns arising in healthcare integration. We argue that integration is necessary imperative for meeting contemporary and future healthcare challenges, a far stronger evidence base for the conditions of its effectiveness is required. In particular, given the increasing emphasis at the policy level for the entire healthcare infrastructure to become better integrated, our analysis of the ethical challenges that follow from the logic of integration itself is timely and important and has hitherto received insufficient attention. METHODS: We evaluated an educational intervention which aims to improve child health outcomes by making transitions between primary to secondary care more efficient, ensuring children and parents are better supported throughout. The programme provided skills for trainee paediatricians and general practitioners (GPs) in co-designing integrated clinical services. RESULTS: The key ethical challenges of integrated care that arose from a clinical perspective are: professional identity and autonomy in an integrated working environment; the concomitant extent of professional responsibility in such an environment; and the urgent need for more evidence to be produced on which strategies for integrating at scale can be based. CONCLUSIONS: From our analysis we suggest a tentative way forward, viewed from a normative position broadly situated at the intersection of deontology and care ethics. We adopt this position because the primary clinical ethical issues in the context of integrated care concern: how to ensure that all duties of care to individual patients are met in a newly orientated working environment where clinical responsibility may be ambiguous; and the need to orientate care around the patient by foregrounding their autonomous preferences and ensuring good patient clinician relationships in clinical decision-making.

Practical allocation system for the distribution of specialised care during cellular therapy access scarcity.

Novel cellular therapy techniques promise to cure many haematology patients refractory to other treatment modalities. These therapies are intensive and require referral to and care from specialised providers. In the USA, this pool of providers is not expanding at a rate necessary to meet expected demand; therefore, access scarcity appears forthcoming and is likely to be widespread. To maintain fair access to these scarce and curative therapies, we must prospectively create a just and practical system to distribute care. In this article, we first review previously implemented medical product and personnel allocation systems, examining their applicability to cellular therapy provider shortages to demonstrate that this problem requires a novel approach. We then present an innovative system for allocating cellular therapy access, which accounts for the constraints of distribution during real-world oncology practice by using a combination of the following principles: (1) maximising life-years per personnel time, (2) youngest and robust first, (3) sickest first, (4) first come/first served and (5) instrumental value. We conclude with justifications for the incorporation of these principles and the omission of others, discuss how access can be distributed using this combination, consider cost and review fundamental factors necessary for the practical implementation and maintenance of this system.

In Defence of Moral Pluralism and Compromise in Health Care Networks.

The organisation of health care is rapidly changing. There is a trend to move away from individual health care institutions towards transmural integrated care and interorganizational collaboration in networks. However, within such collaboration and network there is often likely to be a pluralism of values as different health care institutions often have very different values. For this paper, we examine three different models of how we believe institutions can come to collaborate in networks, and thus reap the potential benefits of such collaboration, despite having different moral beliefs or values. A first way is the pragmatic way in which the different health care institutions avoid ethical reflection and focus on solutions. A second possible route is that of consensus where health care institutions base their collaboration on values that they all share. The third, and final, approach is that of compromise. Although moral compromise is often seen in a negative light, we argue that in many cases compromise might be necessary and ethically justified. In a final section, we will shift our focus from discussing various theoretical methods to allow collaboration to the potential content of consensus or compromise.

Ethical Issues in Integrated Health Care: Implications for Social Workers.

Integrated health care has come of age. What began modestly in the 1930s has evolved into a mature model of health care that is quickly becoming the standard of care. Social workers are now employed in a wide range of comprehensive integrated health care organizations. Some of these settings were designed as integrated health care delivery systems from their beginning. Others evolved over time, some incorporating behavioral health into existing primary care centers and others incorporating primary care into existing behavioral health agencies. In all of these contexts, social workers are encountering complex, sometimes unprecedented, ethical challenges. This article identifies and discusses ethical issues facing social workers in integrated health care settings, especially related to informed consent, privacy, confidentiality, boundaries, dual relationships, and conflicts of interest. The author includes practical resources that social workers can use to develop state-of-the-art ethics policies and protocols.

Ethical Challenges Unique to the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) Model.

The interprofessional nature of the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model invites potential conflicts between different ethical guidelines and principles developed by separate professional disciplines. When the foundational model of care and training on which ethical principles were developed shifts, the assumptions underlying the guidance also shifts, revealing gaps and mismatches. This article reviews the extant literature in this realm, and proposes a more unifying set of ethical guidance for interprofessional, integrated primary care practice. We discuss common ethical dilemmas unique to the PCBH model through case examples, and then apply the newly proposed ethical guideline model to these cases to illustrate how the newly proposed model can be efficient and effective navigating these dilemmas.

Serving the Very Sick, Very Frail, and Very Old: Geriatrics, Palliative Care, and Clinical Ethics.

How can we provide the best care for growing numbers of very frail, very sick, or very old people? The disciplines of geriatrics, palliative care, and clinical ethics each have a good deal to offer to improve care for elders, yet each field is saddled with heavy historical baggage. Using a case as a springboard, we address specific strengths and shortcomings of each field, and what these disciplines can learn from each other. Geriatrics is currently largely focused on prevention of disability, cognitive impairment, and death; it should reorganize around a palliative approach to providing care for elders living with multiple chronic conditions, disability, and dementia. Palliative care, while paying some attention to the spectrum of advanced illness, concentrates primarily on cancer; it should expand its central purpose to include providing supportive care to elders with serious illness and their caregivers. Ethics committee members and consultants principally stress individual autonomy; they need to expand their approach and develop longitudinal relationships with patients and family members, routinely incorporating them in deliberations and the crafting of recommendations. However, improving these three disciplines will only go so far toward improving the care of very frail, very sick, or very old people. What is most needed is longitudinal care provided by interdisciplinary primary care teams steeped in the core principles of all three disciplines.

Towards Integrating the Principlist and Casuist Approaches to Ethical Decisions via Multi-Criterial Support.

An interactive decision support tool based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) can help health professionals integrate the principlist (principle-based) and casuist (case-based) approaches to ethical decision making in both their training and practice. MCDA can incorporate generic ethical principles as criteria; then draw on case-based reasoning as the basis for specifying, in the individual case, the available options, the ratings of each option on each criterion, and the relative weighting of the criteria. This produces a personalised, transparent and decomposable opinion on the merits of each option, as a contribution to enhanced deliberation. As proof of concept and method an exemplar aid adds veracity and confidentiality to beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice, as the criteria, with case-based reasoning supplying the necessary inputs for the decision of whether a nurse should disclose the poor prognosis of a patient to a close relative of the patient, when asked, on their first encounter.

Medicine for the City: Perspective and Solidarity as Tools for Making Urban Health.

The United States has pursued policies of urban upheaval that have undermined social organization, dispersed people, particularly African Americans, and increased rates of disease and disorder. Healthcare institutions have been, and can be, a part of this problem or a part of the solution. This essay addresses two tools that healthcare providers can use to repair the urban ecosystem-perspective and solidarity. Perspective addresses both our ability to envision solutions and our ability to see in the space in which we move. Solidarity is our ability to appreciate our fellowship with other people, a mindset that is at the heart of medical practice. These two tools lay the foundation for structurally competent healthcare providers to act in a restorative manner to create a health-giving built environment.

[Living a good live with e-health: anticipating ethical consequences and monitoring them]. / Goed leven met e-health: morele gevolgen van e-health-toepassingen.

E-health incorporates a range of digital techniques that are interlinked because they promise to improve people's health and quality of life. The question of how these techniques actually contribute to "living a good live" is not so easy to answer, because scientific, commercial and patients' perspectives all come into play. Research on the unintended consequences of e-health applications clearly shows that it is necessary to anticipate social consequences as early as in the design phase. However, because it is not possible to predict some outcomes, it is also necessary to properly monitor how these techniques affect daily life. It is crucial to pay attention to how these techniques affect people with different educational backgrounds.. Digital techniques have a great capacity to democratise healthcare, but may also unintentionally increase health inequalities. The ethical consequences of e-health applications need to be anticipated and monitored in order to prevent this happening as much as possible.

[Integrative and person-centred health care from a health system perspective]. / Integrative und personenzentrierte Gesundheitsversorgung aus der Perspektive des Gesundheitssystems.

OBJECTIVE: Many health-care systems are confronted on the one hand side with the challenge to meet care demands of a continuously aging population that suffers from multiple and chronic diseases and, on the other hand side, to adapt health-care services to the preferences of the population. We analyse whether the German health-care system already pursues the objective to deliver integrated, person-centred, interdisciplinary and interprofessional health-care services and which prospects 'integrated and person-centred health care' offers. METHOD: We performed a selective literature analysis. RESULTS: Different from the World Health Organisation or the Institute of Medicine, the German Social Code Book V does not pursue the objective of delivering person-centred health care. However, the introduction of integrated health-care services is explicitly enabled. Yet until now, only 10% of the population are encompassed by such health-care delivery concepts. Clear chances for integrated and person-centred health care exist, e. g., in reducing repeat diagnostic procedures, overcoming failures in communication and information exchange, and encouraging interprofessional health care delivery that up to now often encounter resistance of physicians. CONCLUSION: Legal provisions to reform the German health-care system in the direction of more integrative and person-centred health-care services are already partly in place. What is lacking is a broad implementation and evaluation of such a concept of health-care delivery that is advantageous for the system and preferred by the population.

[Challenges of an integrative and personalised health care for health economics and the insurance system]. / Herausforderungen einer integrativen und personalisierten Gesundheitsversorgung für die Gesundheitsökonomie und das Versicherungssystem.

OBJECTIVES: "Stratifying medicine" is a topic of increasing importance in the public health system. There are several questions related to "stratifying medicine". This paper reconsiders definitions, opportunities and risks related to "stratifying medicine" as well as the main challenges of "stratifying medicine" from the perspective of a public health insurance. DEFINITION: The application of the term and the definition are important points to discuss. Terms such as "stratified medicine", "personalised medicine" or "individualised medicine" are used. The Techniker Krankenkasse prefers "stratifying medicine", because it usually means a medicine that tailors therapy to specific groups of patients by biomarkers. OPPORTUNITIES AND RISKS: "Stratifying medicine" is associated with various hopes, e. g., the avoidance of ineffective therapies and early detection of diseases. But "stratifying medicine" also carries risks, such as an increase in the number of cases by treatment of disease risks, a duty for health and the weakening of the criteria of evidence-based medicine. CHALLENGES: The complexity of "stratifying medicine" is a big challenge for all involved parties in the health system. A lot of interrelations are still not completely understood. So the statutory health insurance faces the challenge of making innovative therapy concepts accessible in a timely manner to all insured on the one hand but on the other hand also to protect the community from harmful therapies. Information and advice to patients related to "stratifying medicine" is of particular importance. The equitable distribution of fees for diagnosis and counselling presents a particular challenge. The solidarity principle of public health insurance may be challenged by social and ethical issues of "stratifying medicine". CONCLUSION: "Stratifying medicine" offers great potential to improve medical care. However, false hopes must be avoided. Providers and payers should measure chances and risks of "stratifying medicine" together for the welfare of the patients.

Hospital-physician relationships: implications from the professional service firms literature.

PURPOSE: The hospital-physician relationship (HPR) has been the focus of many scholars given the potential impact of this relationship on hospitals' ability to achieve socially and organizationally desirable health care outcomes. Hospitals are dominated by professionals and share many commonalities with professional service firms (PSFs). In this chapter, we explore an alternative HPR based on the governance models prevalent in PSFs. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY APPROACH: We summarize the issues presented by current HPRs and discuss the governance models dominant in PSFs. FINDINGS: We identify the non-equity partnership model as a governance archetype for hospitals; this model accounts for both the professional dominance in health care decisions and the increasing demand for higher accountability and efficiency. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS: There should be careful consideration of existing regulations such as the Stark law and the antikickback statue before the proposed governance model and the compensation structure for physician partners is adopted. RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS: While our governance archetype is based on a review of the literature on HPRs and PSFs, further research is needed to test our model. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Given the dominance of not-for-profit (NFP) ownership in the hospital industry, we believe the non-equity partnership model can help align physician incentives with those of the hospital, and strengthen HPRs to meet the demands of the changing health care environment. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This is the first chapter to explore an alternative hospital-physician integration strategy by examining the governance models in PSFs, which similar to hospitals have a high reliance on a predominantly professional staff.

The role of ethical banks in health care policy and financing in Spain.

OBJECTIVES: Ethical, social, or civic banks, constitute a secondary source of financing, which is particularly relevant in Southern and Central Europe. However there is no information on the scientific literature on this source of health care financing. METHOD: We review the characteristics of saving banks in Spain and illustrate the contribution of one institution "Obra Social Caixa Catalunya" (OS-CC) to the health care financing in Spain. RESULTS: Savings bank health care funding was equivalent to 3 percent of the public health expenditure for 2008. The programs developed by OS-CC illustrate the complex role of savings banks in health financing, provision, training, and policy, particularly in the fields of integrated care and innovation. CONCLUSIONS: Financing is a basic tool for health policy. However, the role of social banking in the development of integrated care networks has been largely disregarded, in spite of its significant contribution to complementary health and social care in Southern and Central Europe. Decision makers both at the public health agencies and at the social welfare departments of savings banks should become aware of the policy implications and impact of savings bank activities in the long-term care system.