Built to last? The sustainability of healthcare system improvements, programmes and interventions: a systematic integrative review.

INTRODUCTION: The sustainability of healthcare delivery systems is challenged by ageing populations, complex systems, increasing rates of chronic disease, increasing costs associated with new medical technologies and growing expectations by healthcare consumers. Healthcare programmes, innovations and interventions are increasingly implemented at the front lines of care to increase effectiveness and efficiency; however, little is known about how sustainability is conceptualised and measured in programme evaluations. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to describe theoretical frameworks, definitions and measures of sustainability, as applied in published evaluations of healthcare improvement programmes and interventions. DESIGN: Systematic integrative review. METHODS: We searched six academic databases, CINAHL, Embase, Ovid MEDLINE, Emerald Management, Scopus and Web of Science, for peer-reviewed English journal articles (July 2011-March 2018). Articles were included if they assessed programme sustainability or sustained outcomes of a programme at the healthcare system level. Six reviewers conducted the abstract and full-text review. Data were extracted on study characteristics, definitions, terminology, theoretical frameworks, methods and tools. Hawker's Quality Assessment Tool was applied to included studies. RESULTS: Of the 92 included studies, 75.0% were classified as high quality. Twenty-seven (29.3%) studies provided 32 different definitions of sustainability. Terms used interchangeably for sustainability included continuation, maintenance, follow-up or long term. Eighty studies (87.0%) clearly reported the timepoints at which sustainability was evaluated: 43.0% at 1-2 years and 11.3% at <12 months. Eighteen studies (19.6%) used a theoretical framework to conceptualise or assess programme sustainability, including frameworks that were not specifically designed to assess sustainability. CONCLUSIONS: The body of literature is limited by the use of inconsistent definitions and measures of programme sustainability. Evaluations of service improvement programmes and interventions seldom used theoretical frameworks. Embedding implementation science and healthcare service researchers into the healthcare system is a promising strategy to improve the rigour of programme sustainability evaluations.

A cross-sectional study investigating the associations of person-organisation and person-group fit with staff outcomes in mental healthcare.

OBJECTIVES: Organisational and workplace cultures are fundamental determinants of health systems performance; through better understanding of the dimensions of culture there is the potential to influence them, and subsequently improve safety and quality of care, as well as the experiences of both patients and staff. One promising conceptual framework for studying culture in healthcare is person-environment (P-E) fit. Comprising person-organisational (P-O) and person-group (P-G) components, P-E fit is defined as the extent to which individuals are compatible with their work environment. The aim of this study was to examine the associations of P-O and P-G fit with staff outcomes in mental healthcare. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Participants (n=213) were staff and volunteers at 31 primary mental health facilities across six states of Australia. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Staff outcomes, comprising burnout (depersonalisation and emotional exhaustion), job satisfaction and work stress. DESIGN: A multidimensional survey tool was used to measure P-O and P-G fit, and staff outcomes. Multiple regression analyses were used to test the associations between fit and outcome measures. RESULTS: The regression analyses indicated that, based on a Bonferroni adjusted alpha value of α=00417, P-O fit accounted for 36.6% of the variability in satisfaction (F=8.951, p≤0.001); 27.7% in emotional exhaustion (F=6.766, p≤0.001); 32.8% in depersonalisation (F=8.646, p≤0.001); and 23.5% in work stress (F=5.439, p≤0.001). The P-G fit results were less conclusive, with P-G fit accounting for 15.8% of the variability in satisfaction (F=4.184, p≤0.001); 10.0% in emotional exhaustion (F=2.488, p=0.014); 28.6% in depersonalisation (F=8.945, p≤0.001); and 10.4% in work stress (F=2.590, p=0.032). There was no statistically significant increase in the variability accounted for when the interaction term of P-O and P-G fit was added to the regression. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight that staff's perception of their workplace and organisational culture can have implications for staff well-being.

How people fit in at work: systematic review of the association between person-organisation and person-group fit with staff outcomes in healthcare.

OBJECTIVES: People interact with their work environment through being, to a greater or lesser extent, compatible with aspects of their setting. This interaction between person and environment is particularly relevant in healthcare settings where compatibility affects not only the healthcare professionals, but also potentially the patient. One way to examine this association is to investigate person-organisation (P-O) fit and person-group (P-G) fit. This systematic review aimed to identify and synthesise knowledge on both P-O fit and P-G fit in healthcare to determine their association with staff outcomes. It was hypothesised that there would be a positive relationship between fit and staff outcomes, such that the experience of compatibility and 'fitting in' would be associated with better staff outcomes. DESIGN: A systematic review was conducted based on an extensive search strategy guided by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analyses to identify relevant literature. DATA SOURCES: CINAHL Complete, EMBASE, Ovid MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Scopus. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Articles were included if they were empirical studies, published in peer-reviewed journals in English language, set in a healthcare context and addressed the association that staff outcomes have with P-O and/or P-G fit. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Included texts were examined for study characteristics, fit constructs examined and types of staff outcomes assessed. The Quality Assessment Tool was used to assess risk of bias. RESULTS: Twenty-eight articles were included in the review. Of these, 96.4% (27/28) reported a significant, positive association between perception of fit and staff outcomes in healthcare contexts, such that a sense of compatibility had various positive implications for staff, including job satisfaction and retention. CONCLUSION: Although the results, as with all systematic reviews, are prone to bias and definitional ambiguity, they are still informative. Generally, the evidence suggests an association between employees' perceived compatibility with the workplace or organisation and a variety of staff outcomes in healthcare settings.

Comprehensive Researcher Achievement Model (CRAM): a framework for measuring researcher achievement, impact and influence derived from a systematic literature review of metrics and models.

OBJECTIVES: Effective researcher assessment is key to decisions about funding allocations, promotion and tenure. We aimed to identify what is known about methods for assessing researcher achievements, leading to a new composite assessment model. DESIGN: We systematically reviewed the literature via the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols framework. DATA SOURCES: All Web of Science databases (including Core Collection, MEDLINE and BIOSIS Citation Index) to the end of 2017. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: (1) English language, (2) published in the last 10 years (2007-2017), (3) full text was available and (4) the article discussed an approach to the assessment of an individual researcher's achievements. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Articles were allocated among four pairs of reviewers for screening, with each pair randomly assigned 5% of their allocation to review concurrently against inclusion criteria. Inter-rater reliability was assessed using Cohen's Kappa (ĸ). The ĸ statistic showed agreement ranging from moderate to almost perfect (0.4848-0.9039). Following screening, selected articles underwent full-text review and bias was assessed. RESULTS: Four hundred and seventy-eight articles were included in the final review. Established approaches developed prior to our inclusion period (eg, citations and outputs, h-index and journal impact factor) remained dominant in the literature and in practice. New bibliometric methods and models emerged in the last 10 years including: measures based on PageRank algorithms or 'altmetric' data, methods to apply peer judgement and techniques to assign values to publication quantity and quality. Each assessment method tended to prioritise certain aspects of achievement over others. CONCLUSIONS: All metrics and models focus on an element or elements at the expense of others. A new composite design, the Comprehensive Researcher Achievement Model (CRAM), is presented, which supersedes past anachronistic models. The CRAM is modifiable to a range of applications.

Systems transformation: learning from change in 60 countries.

PURPOSE: Much work about health reform and systems improvement in healthcare looks at shortcomings and universal problems facing health systems, but rarely are accomplishments dissected and analyzed internationally. The purpose of this paper is to address this knowledge gap by examining the lessons learned from health system reform and improvement efforts in 60 countries. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: In total, 60 low-, middle- and high-income countries provided a case study of successful health reform, which was gathered into a compendium as a recently published book. Here, the extensive source material was re-examined through inductive content analysis to derive broad themes of systems change internationally. FINDINGS: Nine themes were identified: improving policy, coverage and governance; enhancing the quality of care; keeping patients safe; regulating standards and accreditation; organizing care at the macro-level; organizing care at the meso- and micro-level; developing workforces and resources; harnessing technology and IT; and making collaboratives and partnerships work. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: These themes provide a model of what constitutes successful systems change across a wide sample of health systems, offering a store of knowledge about how reformers and improvement initiators achieve their goals. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Few comparative international studies of health systems include a sufficiently wide selection of low-, middle- and high-income countries in their analysis. This paper provides a more balanced approach to consider where achievements are being made across healthcare, and what we can do to replicate and spread successful examples of systems change internationally.

The future of health systems to 2030: a roadmap for global progress and sustainability.

Most research on health systems examines contemporary problems within one, or at most a few, countries. Breaking with this tradition, we present a series of case studies in a book written by key policymakers, scholars and experts, looking at health systems and their projected successes to 2030. Healthcare Systems: Future Predictions for Global Care includes chapters on 52 individual countries and five regions, covering a total of 152 countries. Synthesised, two key contributions are made in this compendium. First, five trends shaping the future healthcare landscape are analysed: sustainable health systems; the genomics revolution; emerging technologies; global demographics dynamics; and new models of care. Second, nine main themes arise from the chapters: integration of healthcare services; financing, economics and insurance; patient-based care and empowering the patient; universal healthcare; technology and information technology; aging populations; preventative care; accreditation, standards, and policy; and human development, education and training. These five trends and nine themes can be used as a blueprint for change. They can help strengthen the efforts of stakeholders interested in reform, ranging from international bodies such as the World Health Organization, the International Society for Quality in Health Care and the World Bank, through to national bodies such as health departments, quality and safety agencies, non-government organisations (NGO) and other groups with an interest in improving healthcare delivery systems. This compendium offers more than a glimpse into the future of healthcare-it provides a roadmap to help shape thinking about the next generation of caring systems, extrapolated over the next 15 years.

When complexity science meets implementation science: a theoretical and empirical analysis of systems change.

BACKGROUND: Implementation science has a core aim - to get evidence into practice. Early in the evidence-based medicine movement, this task was construed in linear terms, wherein the knowledge pipeline moved from evidence created in the laboratory through to clinical trials and, finally, via new tests, drugs, equipment, or procedures, into clinical practice. We now know that this straight-line thinking was naïve at best, and little more than an idealization, with multiple fractures appearing in the pipeline. DISCUSSION: The knowledge pipeline derives from a mechanistic and linear approach to science, which, while delivering huge advances in medicine over the last two centuries, is limited in its application to complex social systems such as healthcare. Instead, complexity science, a theoretical approach to understanding interconnections among agents and how they give rise to emergent, dynamic, systems-level behaviors, represents an increasingly useful conceptual framework for change. Herein, we discuss what implementation science can learn from complexity science, and tease out some of the properties of healthcare systems that enable or constrain the goals we have for better, more effective, more evidence-based care. Two Australian examples, one largely top-down, predicated on applying new standards across the country, and the other largely bottom-up, adopting medical emergency teams in over 200 hospitals, provide empirical support for a complexity-informed approach to implementation. The key lessons are that change can be stimulated in many ways, but a triggering mechanism is needed, such as legislation or widespread stakeholder agreement; that feedback loops are crucial to continue change momentum; that extended sweeps of time are involved, typically much longer than believed at the outset; and that taking a systems-informed, complexity approach, having regard for existing networks and socio-technical characteristics, is beneficial. CONCLUSION: Construing healthcare as a complex adaptive system implies that getting evidence into routine practice through a step-by-step model is not feasible. Complexity science forces us to consider the dynamic properties of systems and the varying characteristics that are deeply enmeshed in social practices, whilst indicating that multiple forces, variables, and influences must be factored into any change process, and that unpredictability and uncertainty are normal properties of multi-part, intricate systems.

Association between organisational and workplace cultures, and patient outcomes: systematic review.

DESIGN AND OBJECTIVES: Every organisation has a unique culture. There is a widely held view that a positive organisational culture is related to positive patient outcomes. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses statement, we systematically reviewed and synthesised the evidence on the extent to which organisational and workplace cultures are associated with patient outcomes. SETTING: A variety of healthcare facilities, including hospitals, general practices, pharmacies, military hospitals, aged care facilities, mental health and other healthcare contexts. PARTICIPANTS: The articles included were heterogeneous in terms of participants. This was expected as we allowed scope for wide-ranging health contexts to be included in the review. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Patient outcomes, inclusive of specific outcomes such as pain level, as well as broader outcomes such as patient experience. RESULTS: The search strategy identified 2049 relevant articles. A review of abstracts using the inclusion criteria yielded 204 articles eligible for full-text review. Sixty-two articles were included in the final analysis. We assessed studies for risk of bias and quality of evidence. The majority of studies (84%) were from North America or Europe, and conducted in hospital settings (89%). They were largely quantitative (94%) and cross-sectional (81%). The review identified four interventional studies, and no randomised controlled trials, but many good quality social science studies. We found that overall, positive organisational and workplace cultures were consistently associated with a wide range of patient outcomes such as reduced mortality rates, falls, hospital acquired infections and increased patient satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: Synthesised, although there was no level 1 evidence, our review found a consistently positive association held between culture and outcomes across multiple studies, settings and countries. This supports the argument in favour of activities that promote positive cultures in order to enhance outcomes in healthcare organisations.

Built to last? The sustainability of health system improvements, interventions and change strategies: a study protocol for a systematic review.

INTRODUCTION: The sustainability of healthcare interventions and change programmes is of increasing importance to researchers and healthcare stakeholders interested in creating sustainable health systems to cope with mounting stressors. The aim of this protocol is to extend earlier work and describe a systematic review to identify, synthesise and draw meaning from studies published within the last 5 years that measure the sustainability of interventions, improvement efforts and change strategies in the health system. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The protocol outlines a method by which to execute a rigorous systematic review. The design includes applying primary and secondary data collection techniques, consisting of a comprehensive database search complemented by contact with experts, and searching secondary databases and reference lists, using snowballing techniques. The review and analysis process will occur via an abstract review followed by a full-text screening process. The inclusion criteria include English-language, peer-reviewed, primary, empirical research articles published after 2011 in scholarly journals, for which the full text is available. No restrictions on location will be applied. The review that results from this protocol will synthesise and compare characteristics of the included studies. Ultimately, it is intended that this will help make it easier to identify and design sustainable interventions, improvement efforts and change strategies. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: As no primary data were collected, ethical approval was not required. Results will be disseminated in conference presentations, peer-reviewed publications and among policymaker bodies interested in creating sustainable health systems.

Accomplishing reform: successful case studies drawn from the health systems of 60 countries.

Healthcare reform typically involves orchestrating a policy change, mediated through some form of operational, systems, financial, process or practice intervention. The aim is to improve the ways in which care is delivered to patients. In our book 'Health Systems Improvement Across the Globe: Success Stories from 60 Countries', we gathered case-study accomplishments from 60 countries. A unique feature of the collection is the diversity of included countries, from the wealthiest and most politically stable such as Japan, Qatar and Canada, to some of the poorest, most densely populated or politically challenged, including Afghanistan, Guinea and Nigeria. Despite constraints faced by health reformers everywhere, every country was able to share a story of accomplishment-defining how their case example was managed, what services were affected and ultimately how patients, staff, or the system overall, benefited. The reform themes ranged from those relating to policy, care coverage and governance; to quality, standards, accreditation and regulation; to the organization of care; to safety, workforce and resources; to technology and IT; through to practical ways in which stakeholders forged collaborations and partnerships to achieve mutual aims. Common factors linked to success included the 'acorn-to-oak tree' principle (a small scale initiative can lead to system-wide reforms); the 'data-to-information-to-intelligence' principle (the role of IT and data are becoming more critical for delivering efficient and appropriate care, but must be converted into useful intelligence); the 'many-hands' principle (concerted action between stakeholders is key); and the 'patient-as-the-pre-eminent-player' principle (placing patients at the centre of reform designs is critical for success).