Using institutional theory to analyse hospital responses to external demands for finance and quality in five European countries.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Burnett S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4772277 | biostudies-other | 2016 Apr
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
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Project description:BACKGROUND:Hospital performance, presented as the comparison of average measurements, dismisses that hospital outcomes may vary across types of patients. We aim at drawing out the relevance of accounting for patient heterogeneity when reporting on hospital performance. METHODS:An observational study on administrative data from virtually all 2009 hospital admissions for Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) discharged in Denmark, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. Hospital performance was proxied using in-hospital risk-adjusted mortality. Multilevel Regression Modelling (MLRM) was used to assess differences in hospital performance, comparing the estimates of random intercept modelling (capturing hospital general contextual effects (GCE)), and random slope modelling (capturing hospital contextual effects for patients with and without congestive heart failure -CHF). The weighted Kappa Index (KI) was used to assess the agreement between performance estimates. RESULTS:We analysed 46,875 admissions of AMI, 6,314 with coexistent CHF, discharged from 107 hospitals. The overall in-hospital mortality rate was 5.2%, ranging from 4% in Sweden to 6.9% in Portugal. The MLRM with random slope outperformed the model with only random intercept, highlighting a much higher GCE in CHF patients [VPC = 8.34 (CI95% 4.94 to 13.03) and MOR = 1.69 (CI95% 1.62 to 2.21) vs. VPC = 3.9 (CI95% 2.4 to 5.9), MOR of 1.42 (CI95% 1.31 to 1.54) without CHF]. No agreement was observed between estimates [KI = -0,02 (CI95% -0,08 to 0.04]. CONCLUSIONS:The different GCE in AMI patients with and without CHF, along with the lack of agreement in estimates, suggests that accounting for patient heterogeneity is required to adequately characterize and report on hospital performance.
| S-EPMC7004308 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundEnd-of-life (EoL) care volunteers in hospitals are a novel approach to support patients and their close ones. The iLIVE Volunteer Study supported hospital volunteer coordinators from five European countries to design and implement an EoL care volunteer service on general wards in their hospitals. This study aimed to identify and explore barriers and facilitators to the implementation of EoL care volunteer services in the five hospitals.MethodsVolunteer coordinators (VCs) from the Netherlands (NL), Norway (NO), Slovenia (SI), Spain (ES) and United Kingdom (UK) participated in a focus group interview and subsequent in-depth one-to-one interviews. A theory-inspired framework based on the five domains of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was used for data collection and analysis. Results from the focus group were depicted in radar charts per hospital.ResultsBarriers across all hospitals were the COVID-19 pandemic delaying the implementation process, and the lack of recognition of the added value of EoL care volunteers by hospital staff. Site-specific barriers were struggles with promoting the service in a highly structured setting with many stakeholders (NL), negative views among nurses on hospital volunteering (NL, NO), a lack of support from healthcare professionals and the management (SI, ES), and uncertainty about their role in implementation among VCs (ES). Site-specific facilitators were training of volunteers (NO, SI, NL), involving volunteers in promoting the service (NO), and education and awareness for healthcare professionals about the role and boundaries of volunteers (UK).ConclusionEstablishing a comprehensive EoL care volunteer service for patients in non-specialist palliative care wards involves multiple considerations including training, creating awareness and ensuring management support. Implementation requires involvement of stakeholders in a way that enables medical EoL care and volunteering to co-exist. Further research is needed to explore how trust and equal partnerships between volunteers and professional staff can be built and sustained.Trial registrationNCT04678310. Registered 21/12/2020.
| S-EPMC10985898 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Housing wealth is the largest source of household wealth, but we know little about the distribution of housing wealth and how institutions have shaped this distribution. Subsidies for homeownership, privatisation of social housing and mortgage finance liberalisation are likely to have influenced the distribution of housing wealth in recent decades. To examine their impact, we describe housing wealth inequalities across occupational classes for two birth cohorts aged fifty and older. The analysis is conducted across 16 European countries with divergent welfare states and housing systems using the fourth wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in Europe (SHARE; 2011/2012). Our results indicate that the expansion of homeownership in a market-based housing system is associated with a more unequal distribution of housing wealth across occupational classes, as an increasing number of 'marginal' owners are drawn into precarious homeownership. Such a pattern is not found in housing wealth accumulation regimes with a less market-based provision of housing. When the state or the family drive homeownership expansion, a de-coupling of labour market income and housing consumption results in a more equal distribution of housing wealth.
| S-EPMC5744614 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Building on the active aging framework, the aim of this study, carried out between 2016 and 2018, is to analyze concrete experiences of older individuals acting as key players of social change in six local communities of five European countries (Bulgaria, Denmark, England, France, Spain). The 19 seniors involved in the study, according to social contexts, individual past experiences, knowledge, and motivations, acted as senior social entrepreneurs, trying to build a pathway towards social solutions for unmet social problems they detected in local communities. Data were collected via templates and questionnaires and analyzed using the thematic analysis. The results highlighted that the 16 local initiatives created by seniors concerned social problems such as food waste, social isolation, multicultural integration, etc. The social solutions implemented by seniors seemed to have the potential to produce social value and, to different degrees, encouraging results and impact. Since this "social experiment" provided evidence that senior social entrepreneuring could be a driver to solve societal problems, policy makers should sustain the spread of both social entrepreneurial mindset and practices at the European level, for catalyzing the active potential of older people for the benefit of European local communities.
| S-EPMC7177232 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The objective of the paper is to evaluate the quality of systemic change management (CHM) and readiness for change in five Central European countries. The secondary goal is to identify trends and upcoming changes in the field of digital innovations in healthcare. The results show that all compared countries (regardless of their historical context) deal with similar CHM challenges with a rather similar degree of success. A questionnaire distributed to hospitals clearly showed that there is still considerable room for improvement in terms of the use of specific CHM tools. A review focused on digital innovations based on the PRISMA statement showed that there are five main directions, namely, data collection and integration, telemedicine, artificial intelligence, electronic medical records, and M-Health. In the hospital environment, there are considerable reservations in applying change management principles, as well as the absence of a systemic approach. The main factors that must be monitored for a successful and sustainable CHM include a clearly defined and widely communicated vision, early engagement of all stakeholders, precisely set rules, adaptation to the local context and culture, provision of a technical base, and a step-by-step implementation with strong feedback.
| S-EPMC8625074 | biostudies-literature
Project description:AimsThe purpose was to compare the frequency of needs of patients with schizophrenia in forensic services across five European countries as assessed by both the patients and their care staff.MethodsPatients with schizophrenia and a history of significant interpersonal violence were recruited from forensic psychiatric services in Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland and England. Participants' needs were assessed using the Camberwell Assessment of Needs-Forensic Version (CANFOR). Multiple linear regression analyses were used to identify predictors of numbers of needs.ResultsIn this sample, (n = 221) the most commonly reported need according to patients (71.0%) and staff (82.8%) was the management of psychotic symptoms. A need for information was mentioned by about 45% of staff and patients. Staff members reported a significantly higher number of total needs than patients (mean 6.9 vs. 6.2). In contrast, staff members reported a significantly lower number of unmet needs than patients (mean 2.0 vs. 2.5). Numbers of total needs and met needs differed between countries. Unmet needs as reported by patients showed positive associations with the absence of comorbid personality disorder, with higher positive symptom scores and lifetime suicide or self-harm history. Significant predictors of unmet needs according to staff were absence of comorbid personality disorder and higher positive as well as negative symptom scores according to PANSS.ConclusionsStaff rated a significantly higher number of total needs than patients, while patients rated more unmet needs. This indicates that patients' self-assessments of needs yield important information for providing sufficient help and support.
| S-EPMC9284498 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionEconomic evaluations of tobacco control policies targeting adolescents are scarce. Few take into account real-world, large-scale implementation costs; few compare cost-effectiveness of different policies across different countries. We assessed the cost-effectiveness of five tobacco control policies (nonschool bans, including bans on sales to minors, bans on smoking in public places, bans on advertising at points-of-sale, school smoke-free bans, and school education programs), implemented in 2016 in Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Portugal.MethodsCost-effectiveness estimates were calculated per country and per policy, from the State perspective. Costs were collected by combining quantitative questionnaires with semi-structured interviews on how policies were implemented in each setting, in real practice. Short-term effectiveness was based on the literature, and long-term effectiveness was modeled using the DYNAMO-HIA tool. Discount rates of 3.5% were used for costs and effectiveness. Sensitivity analyses considered 1%-50% short-term effectiveness estimates, highest cost estimates, and undiscounted effectiveness.FindingsNonschool bans cost up to €253.23 per healthy life year, school smoking bans up to €91.87 per healthy life year, and school education programs up to €481.35 per healthy life year. Cost-effectiveness depended on the costs of implementation, short-term effectiveness, initial smoking rates, dimension of the target population, and weight of smoking in overall mortality and morbidity.ConclusionsAll five policies were highly cost-effective in all countries according to the World Health Organization thresholds for public health interventions. Cost-effectiveness was preserved even when using the highest costs and most conservative effectiveness estimates.ImplicationsEconomic evaluations using real-world data on tobacco control policies implemented at a large scale are scarce, especially considering nonschool bans targeting adolescents. We assessed the cost-effectiveness of five tobacco control policies implemented in 2016 in Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Portugal. This study shows that all five policies were highly cost-effective considering the World Health Organization threshold, even when considering the highest costs and most conservative effectiveness estimates.
| S-EPMC7291799 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDespite a concerted policy effort in Europe, social inequalities in health are a persistent problem. Developing a standardised measure of socioeconomic level across Europe will improve the understanding of the underlying mechanisms and causes of inequalities. This will facilitate developing, implementing and assessing new and more effective policies, and will improve the comparability and reproducibility of health inequality studies among countries. This paper presents the extension of the European Deprivation Index (EDI), a standardised measure first developed in France, to four other European countries-Italy, Portugal, Spain and England, using available 2001 and 1999 national census data.Methods and resultsThe method previously tested and validated to construct the French EDI was used: first, an individual indicator for relative deprivation was constructed, defined by the minimal number of unmet fundamental needs associated with both objective (income) poverty and subjective poverty. Second, variables available at both individual (European survey) and aggregate (census) levels were identified. Third, an ecological deprivation index was constructed by selecting the set of weighted variables from the second step that best correlated with the individual deprivation indicator.ConclusionsFor each country, the EDI is a weighted combination of aggregated variables from the national census that are most highly correlated with a country-specific individual deprivation indicator. This tool will improve both the historical and international comparability of studies, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying social inequalities in health and implementation of intervention to tackle social inequalities in health.
| S-EPMC4853548 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundCOVID-19 reached Latin-American countries slightly later than European countries, around February/March, allowing some emergency preparedness response in countries characterized by low health system capacities and socioeconomic disparities.ObjectiveThis paper focuses on the first months of the pandemic in five Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. It analyses how the pre-pandemic context, and the government's responses to contain and mitigate the spread together with economic measures have affected the COVID-19 health outcomes.MethodsExtensive qualitative document analysis was conducted focused on publicly-available epidemiological data and federal and state/regional policy documents since the beginning of the pandemic.ResultsThe countries were quick to implement stringent COVID-19 measures and incrementally scaled up their health systems capacity, although tracing and tracking have been poor. All five countries have experienced a large number of cases and deaths due to COVID-19. The analysis on the excess deaths also shows that the impact in deaths is far higher than the official numbers reported to date for some countries.ConclusionDespite the introduction of stringent measures of containment and mitigation, and the scale up of health system capacities, pre-pandemic conditions that characterize these countries (high informal employment, and social inequalities) have undermined the effectiveness of the countries' responses to the pandemic. The economic support measures put in place were found to be too timid for some countries and introduced too late in most of them. Additionally, the lack of a comprehensive strategy for testing and tracking has also contributed to the failure to contain the spread of the virus.
| S-EPMC7451099 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We investigate parameter heterogeneity in breast cancer 1-year cumulative hospital costs across five European countries as part of the EuroHOPE project. The paper aims to explore whether conditional mean effects provide a suitable representation of the national variation in hospital costs. A cohort of patients with a primary diagnosis of invasive breast cancer (ICD-9 codes 174 and ICD-10 C50 codes) is derived using routinely collected individual breast cancer data from Finland, the metropolitan area of Turin (Italy), Norway, Scotland and Sweden. Conditional mean effects are estimated by ordinary least squares for each country, and quantile regressions are used to explore heterogeneity across the conditional quantile distribution. Point estimates based on conditional mean effects provide a good approximation of treatment response for some key demographic and diagnostic specific variables (e.g. age and ICD-10 diagnosis) across the conditional quantile distribution. For many policy variables of interest, however, there is considerable evidence of parameter heterogeneity that is concealed if decisions are based solely on conditional mean results. The use of quantile regression methods reinforce the need to consider beyond an average effect given the greater recognition that breast cancer is a complex disease reflecting patient heterogeneity.
| S-EPMC5063195 | biostudies-literature