Background
In England, health, social care and public health are organised locally by organisations called Integrated Care Systems (ICSs). ICSs aim to join up (or integrate) the health and social care system to work together more closely. It is thought that more integrated or joined up care benefits people by achieving better outcomes (e.g. reduction in common health problems such as diabetes or heart disease, or improved quality of life) and giving them better experiences of care. Integrated care is thought to be particularly helpful for people with complex long-term health problems who need to use multiple health and/or social care services.
There are many ways to assess how well ICSs are working and whether better outcomes have been achieved. However, if outcomes are measured in different ways, they cannot easily be compared. Therefore, it would be useful to have agreement on ‘what’ needs to be measured and ‘how’ this needs to be measured. The “core outcome set” (COS) approach aims to achieve this agreement by asking people what outcomes are most important and how these should be measured.
Research
This project aims to develop a COS to track how better outcomes can be measured for integrated care, such as those delivered by ICSs in England for people with long-term complex physical and mental health problems. The project will first establish what type of outcomes need to be measured (e.g. quality of life) and second how to measure the agreed outcomes (e.g. which questionnaire asking people about their quality of life). The literature will be reviewed, and a panel will be convened to give their opinion on ‘what’ outcomes and ‘how’ to measure outcomes. The panel will include people who use services and their families, care providers, researchers, and policy makers. The project will also explore what helps or hinders the use of COS to assess ICS, such as how the data can be collected from relevant people, and how practical it is to use.
Intended Impact
To assess outcomes in integrated health and care systems, such as ICSs, the COS can be used to show the health and care outcomes of different people. These findings can be used for ICSs to learn what works well and what works less well. It will help ICSs to know where improvement needs to be made.