Ecosystems for integrated long-term care: KU expertise in European research consortium

"Growing complexity resulting from demographic developments is putting pressure on existing care services in all European countries, which tend to be episodic and primarily medically oriented, but do not focus on the overall process. However, it is often important, for example in the context of care transfers, to plan ahead to be able to respond to needs in various possible ways", explains Professor Zerth. For example, if an elderly person is discharged from hospital after treatment for a femoral neck fracture, this not only requires follow-up treatment. It should also be checked whether the family's own home needs to be adapted or what kind of support the family will need for future care. The person-centered approach of the project therefore deliberately aims to integrate medical, nursing and social needs in the sense of an ecosystem. "By ecosystem, we mean a combination with and from various social actors that can address the issue of social participation in rural structures, for example in scenarios where traditional family-based support might only be less pronounced", explains Zerth.

The researchers hope that a systematic review of successful projects with an integrative perspective in various European countries, which will be carried out as part of BUILD, will provide new insights. The aim is to look at differences in terms of access to and nature of care services, as well as gender-specific aspects. Zerth says: "Family care is still very often provided primarily by women, who later often find it more difficult to find care arrangements in their own lives when they need care and therefore have to make disproportionate use of inpatient long-term care services, for example in Germany. Developing integrative care systems in a participatory manner therefore offers the opportunity to take up the various facets of user perspectives and the question of what care responsibility can be expected from a social perspective in order to discover 'blind spots' in the reality of care."
BUILD takes into account different perspectives of local authorities, affected elderly adults with complex care needs, formal and informal caregivers, various interest groups and political decision-makers at different regulatory levels. With the participatory involvement of users and community management, the project team wants to work on a European long-term care toolkit. This toolkit for decision-makers will be based on social science and socio-economic research by the researchers involved in BUILD and will contribute to the development of a European policy strategy for integrated long-term care.
 
Professor Zerth is involved in the project both in the European inventory of care-relevant ecosystems and the relevant regulatory framework as well as in the systematization of the state of knowledge and the development of the decision toolkit and its validation. He will also contribute his expertise in social impact measurement, for example with regard to social return on investment. This model offers the possibility of evaluating not only the economic but also the social impact of measures.
 
The research consortium is led by the Chair of Healthcare Management and Health Services Research at the University of Bayreuth, Professor Dr. Dr. Klaus Nagels. In addition to the KU, the consortium includes: Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences (Krems), Charles University (Prague), University of Lisbon, Lisbon School of Economics and Management (Lisbon), Fundación Avedis Donabedian (Barcelona), VICESSE Research GmbH (Vienna), GLOBAZ, S.A. (Oliveira de Azeméis) and the Danish Board of Technology (Copenhagen). The project will start in March next year.