Symposium: How to organize, finance and evaluate integrated care
Workshop: Taking care of your population: how to organize, finance and evaluate integrated care. International evidence and local context
Took place at NSW Parliament House, 6 Macquarie Street, Sydney on Friday, 9 November
IFIC Australia presented a symposium with international experts Dr Apostolos Tsiachristas (Oxford University), Dr Liz Schroeder (Macquarie University), and Dr Viktoria Stein (IFIC) for a comprehensive discussion on how to organize care on a population level.
The symposium presented evidence and international experience, and put it into the context of the Australian reality. In three parts, the diverse but interconnecting elements of planning on a population level, organising a diverse network, and collaborating across professions will be complemented by examples of how to overcome financial barriers and how to incentivize a complex system. Finally, the intricacies of measuring and evaluating population-based care and tools to capture the patients’ perspective will be introduced. International and local examples will illustrate how integrated care can work despite the system’s barriers.
Speakers?
Dr Apostolos Tsiachristas (Oxford University) is a senior researcher at the Health Economics Research Centre (HERC), University of Oxford. His main research interests are related to the economic evaluation and financing of complex interventions, with a particular focus on integrated care and mental health care. In collaboration with allied departments at Oxford University, Apostolos is involved in several research projects, mainly funded by the NIHR (CLAHRC and BRC) and Wellcome Trust, across a wide range of services for prevention, assessment, diagnosis and treatment. In addition he has varied experience in working in experimental and observational studies in diverse clinical areas such as psychosis, self-harm, dementia, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Prior to his current position, Apostolos undertook research at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and consultancy work at Aarts Public Economics in The Hague. Apostolos has been teaching health economics as part of undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional courses in Oxford and Rotterdam. His work is published in numerous international scientific journals and presented at prestigious conferences.
Apostolos has been acting as an Associate Editor at the BMC-Health Services Research, Section Editor (Health Economics) at the International Journal of Integrated Care and Guest Editor at Health Policy. He is affiliated to Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.
Dr Liz Schroeder (Macquarie University) currently lectures in public health, and undertakes research in policy analysis in Australia and abroad using health economic methodologies.
She was previously a senior researcher at the University of Oxford, where she also taught in the masters in global health programme. Her research focused on the economic aspects of perinatal and paediatric health care and she evaluated the cost-effectiveness of health innovations funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR UK). More recently, since moving to Australia, her research areas have broadened to include integrated care, mental health, disability and perinatal care.
Dr Viktoria Stein (IFIC) joined the International Foundation for Integrated Care in September 2015 as Senior Fellow in Integrated Care and Head of the Integrated Care Academy©. As such, she is responsible for the development of IFIC’s Education and Training programme, which provides a range of courses and tools to support knowledge transfer, skills development and technical know-how. Among the portfolio is the International Summer School on Integrated Care, webinar series and content provision for Master’s programmes around the world. The courses are relevant for students, researches and professionals alike and are adapted to the needs of partners, such as universities or local health boards, on demand. Viktoria holds a PhD in health economics and in her work focuses on health systems and their organization, specifically how to design contextualized integrated models of care and how to manage the change process towards such models. She previously worked with the WHO Regional Office for Europe coordinating the development of the Framework for Action on Coordinated/Integrated Health Services Delivery, and supporting WHO Member States in reforming their health systems to better address the challenges of providing services for ageing populations and people with multi-morbidities. Prior to joining WHO, she was a research assistant at the Medical University of Vienna, working on the development of Austrian national priorities regarding integrated care and a national integrated care programme for dementia patients and their caregivers, among other things. In 2009, she was the Scientific Programme Coordinator and Organiser of the 9th International Conference on Integrated Care in Vienna. Throughout her career, Viktoria had a strong interest and focus on education and training, teaching students and professionals around the world, as well as developing her own course programmes. Viktoria was a founding member of the Board of IFIC and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Integrated Care. Moreover, she is the founding president of the Young Researchers in Health Network (YRIHN), which will be further developed under the auspices of IFIC.