Health Research BC is providing match funds for this research project, which is funded by CIHR’s Strategy for Patient Oriented Research (SPOR) Primary and Integrated Health Care Innovations (PIHCI) Network – Knowledge Synthesis Grants.
Jason Sutherland is Professor in UBC’s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research in the School of Population and Public Health. He is also a Scholar of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.
This is a two-province research team, though the scope of the project is examining integrated funding models across the globe. Little is known regarding how other countries have developed and implemented policies for supporting integrated healthcare. This study will conduct an extensive review of the literature and synthesize the evidence regarding the scope and breadth of policies and their effectiveness to improve integration of healthcare across sectors of the delivery system.
Knowledge translation activities:
The team expects to share findings of the project with key public stakeholders regarding attributes of policy and delivery systems that integrate sectors of the healthcare delivery system to improve care and outcomes.
In my opinion, the most exciting outputs from this project include the development of a multi-institution collaborative to collect surgical patients’ health and health outcome information. The information that this project has generated has led to innovative insights into the value of operative treatment for the patient, health system and government. This information has led to creative ways of re-configuring access to elective surgery, improving mental health in addition to physical health, and training students on the importance of patients’ perceptions of their health.
The impact of this project is local, national and international. Locally, operative patients, the health system and the province are benefiting from understanding the gain in health attributable to surgery. Nationally, this work is garnering significant attention from outcomes researchers and health systems seeking to understand variability in health and healthcare outcomes from surgical care. Internationally, this work is attracting interest from countries with public health systems with similar problems in accessing surgical care and cost-efficiency of healthcare delivery, international agencies, such as the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM), and academic institutions.
The project is continuing to expand with financial and in-kind support from new organizations. In 2021, PHSA and the Heart and Stroke Foundation (B.C.) began funding the expansion of the project.