



IJIC 20th Anniversary Issue
This 20th Anniversary Edition presents a series of policy papers which review progress with integrated care from countries and regions from across the world. To introduce the article, lead authors have provided a talking head of the main achievements and points of learning for other health and care systems.
England
Policy papers
Integrated Health and Social Care in England: Ten Years On
Authors: Robin Miller, Jon Glasby, Helen Dickinson
As part of major policy reforms begun in 2010, England introduced a wave of initiatives to encourage more integrated care between health and social care. These built on previous attempts which sought to achieve similar objectives through a focus on better partnership working. This article provides an overview and critical commentary on integrated care policy in England from 2010–2020 based on reviews by regulators, parliamentary committees and the national audit office.
Policy papers
Integrated Care in England – what can we Learn from a Decade of National Pilot Programmes?
Authors: Richard Q. Lewis, Kath Checkland, Mary Alison Durand, Tom Ling, Nicholas Mays, Martin Roland, Judith A. Smith
For more than a decade the English NHS has pursued integrated care through three national pilot programmes. The independent evaluators of these programmes here identify several common themes that inform the development of integrated care.
Scotland
Policy papers
Health and Social Care Reform in Scotland – What Next?
Authors: Anne Hendry , Maimie Thompson, Peter Knight, Eleanor McCallum, Alison Taylor, Helen Rainey, Andrew Strong
This paper analyses the important enablers, barriers and impacts of country-wide implementation of integrated health and social care in Scotland. It offers insights for other systems seeking to advance similar policy and practice. Landmark legislation was based on a shared vision and narrative about improving outcomes for people and communities. Implementation has involved coordination of multiple policies and interventions for different life stages, care groups, care settings and local context within a dynamic and complex system.
Belgium
Research & Theory
What Makes Integration of Chronic Care so Difficult? A Macro-Level Analysis of Barriers and Facilitators in Belgium
Authors: Katrien Danhieux , Monika Martens, Elien Colman, Edwin Wouters, Roy Remmen, Josefien van Olmen, Sibyl Anthierens
Although many countries have been implementing integrated care, the scale-up remains difficult. Macro-level system barriers play an important role. By selecting three key policies, which have implemented integrated care in Belgium over the last 10 years, we aim to go beyond the identification of their specific barriers and facilitators to obtain an overarching generic view.
USA
Policy papers
Integrated Health and Social Care in the United States: A Decade of Policy Progress
Authors: Sahil Sandhu, Anu Sharma, Rushina Cholera, Janet Prvu Bettger
Over the last decade in the United States (US), the burden of chronic disease, health care costs, and fragmented care delivery have increased at alarming rates. To address these challenges, policymakers have prioritized new payment and delivery models to incentivize better integrated health and social services. This paper outlines three major national and state policy initiatives to improve integrated health and social care over the last ten years in the US, with a focus on the Medicaid public insurance program for Americans with low incomes.
Switzerland
Policy papers
Integrated Care in Switzerland: Strengths and Weaknesses of a Federal System
Authors: Séverine Schusselé Filliettaz , Peter Berchtold, Ursula Koch, Isabelle Peytremann-Bridevaux
Switzerland’s fragmented healthcare system mirrors its federal structure and mix of cultures and languages. Although the Swiss have a higher life expectancy than most of their neighbours, their healthcare system faces similar challenges that call for more integrated care (IC). This article aims to provide insight into the specificities of and latest developments in Switzerland’s healthcare system and how they may have influenced the development and implementation of IC there
Canada
Policy papers
Does Integrated Care Carry the Gene of Bureaucracy? Lessons from the Case of Québec
Authors: Yves Couturier, Paul Wankah, Maxime Guillette, Louise Belzile
Demographic and epidemiological transitions of industralized countries mean health systems have to integrate health and social services to respond to the changing needs of their populations. Efforts to integrate care involve important policy and structural changes. This paper examines whether integration efforts are lost in translation during the bureaucratic appropriation of models, or, in an allegorical way, do they reveal genes of bureaucracy?
Policy papers
Facilitating Integration Through Team-Based Primary Healthcare: A Cross-Case Policy Analysis of Four Canadian Provinces
Authors: Alexandra Lukey, Sharon Johnston, Stephanie Montesanti, Catherine Donnelly, Paul Wankah, Mylaine Breton, Isabelle Gaboury, Simone Parniak, Caille Pritchard, Shannon Berg, Karin Maiwald, Sara Mallinson, Lee A. Green, Nelly D. Oelke
Team-based care can improve integrated health services by increasing comprehensiveness and continuity of care in primary healthcare (PHC) settings. Collaborative models involving providers from different professions can help to achieve coordinated, high-quality person-centred care. In Canada, there has been variation in both the timing/pace of adoption and approach to interprofessional PHC (IPHC) policy. Provinces are at different stages in the development, implementation, and evaluation of team-based PHC models. This paper describes how different policies, contexts, and innovations across four Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec) facilitate or limit integrated health services through IPHC teams.
International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC)
The International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC) is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original articles in the field of integrated care on a continuous basis. It gained an impact rating of 2.913 (2021)*
Established in 2000, IJIC’s mission is to promote integrated care as a scientific discipline. IJIC’s primary purpose is to examine critically the policy and practice of integrated care and whether and how this has impacted on quality-of-care, user experiences, and cost-effectiveness.
The journal regularly publishes conference supplements and special themed editions. To find out more contact Managing Editor, Susan Royer.
The Journal is supported by the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC)
Yearly Journal Rankings
- Impact Factor rating 2.913 (2021)*
- Impact Factor rating 5.120 (2020)
- Impact Factor rating 2.753 (2019)
- Impact Factor rating 2.489 (2018)
- Impact Factor rating 1.837 (2017)
- Impact Factor rating 2.230 (2016)
- Impact Factor rating 1.557 (2015)
- Impact Factor rating 1.500 (2014)
- Immediacy Index: 0.323**
- SCImago Journal Rankings (SJR): 0.614***
- Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 1.083****
- Journal Citation Reports Ranking (2021 edition): 62/109 Science Edition, subject categories HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES; 42/88 Social Science Edition, subject categories HEALTH POLICY & SERVICES
- Google Scholar H5 Index: 30*****
- CiteScore: 3.4******
* The impact factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field
**The Immediacy Index is the average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published. (JCR, Web of Science)
***SCImago Journal Rank (SJR indicator) is a measure of scientific influence of scholarly journals that accounts for both the number of citations received by a journal and the importance or prestige of the journals where such citations come from. (SCOPUS)
****Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field. The impact of a single citation is given higher value in subject areas where citations are less likely, and vice versa.( SCOPUS)
*****The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each. For example, a publication with five articles cited by, respectively, 17, 9, 6, 3, and 2, has the h-index of 3. The h5-index of a publication is the h-index of only those of its articles that were published in the last five complete calendar years. (GOOGLE SCHOLAR)
****** CiteScore is a measure reflecting the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published.