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Health care systems aspire to adopt integration strategies shifting the focus from acute care to a broader focus on community-based health and social services. Real-world examples demonstrating effective delivery of integrated care are essential.

In this article, we introduce UHN Connected Care Hub, an innovative model of care comprising an interdisciplinary team designing sustainable, shareable practices across the continuum of care alongside community and health organization partnerships.

We describe UHN Connected Care Hub’s ability to identify patients from high-risk population and collaborate to delivery timely care, in detailing the real world experience of this model of care in the organization of a centralized system of micro-clinics to administer a therapeutic for pre-exposure prophylaxis against COVID-19 (Tixagevimab/cilgavimab [Evusheld]) in a population of immunocompromised patients.

Having a centralized system of micro-clinics for care delivery presents opportunities for increased adaptability, patient accessibility, enhanced community partnerships and integratedness. Expansion in the scope of services could also create new opportunities in preventative therapies for optimizing the cost effectiveness and quality of health care provided at the population level.

There is limited evidence on how to efficiently deliver integrated care, particularly to vulnerable and co-morbid patients. We discuss how dynamic organizations with proper infrastructure and a network of healthcare partnerships may allow a more fluid response to rapidly changing policies and procedures and facilitate preparedness for future health care crises or pandemics.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of the challenges and implications entailed by deploying mobile clinics in conflict zones to reach populations affected by violence and cut off from health-care services.

This research combines an integrated literature review and an instrumental case study. The literature review comprises two targeted reviews to provide insights: one on conflict zones and one on mobile clinics. The case study describes the process and challenges faced throughout a mobile clinic deployment during and after the Iraq War. The data was gathered using mixed methods over a two-year period (2017–2018).

Armed conflicts directly impact the populations’ health and access to health care. Mobile clinic deployments are often used and recommended to provide health-care access to vulnerable populations cut off from health-care services. However, there is a dearth of peer-reviewed literature documenting decision support tools for mobile clinic deployments.

This study highlights the gaps in the literature and provides direction for future research to support the development of valuable insights and decision support tools for practitioners.

This study aims to explore the empirical correlation between patient flow issues, quality of green health services and patient satisfaction in specialist medical department factors from patients’ perspectives as service consumers.

This research is a type of nonintervention empirical research that uses an open survey to explore the views and experiences of users of specialist medical department services. The targeted population is hospital patients included in the top five national PERSI (Indonesian Hospital Association) Award 2022 Green Hospital Category, with a total number of respondents of 572 people. This study uses the partial least square-structural equation modeling analysis method with the SmartPLS application.

Patient flow problems generally affect the quality of eco-friendly health services, except for the waiting time problem, which affects service quality. It should be understood as a top priority for patients to receive services from medical specialists without risking time as a core service aspect from the patient’s perspective. In addition, all variables in eco-friendly hospital services affect patient satisfaction, except in the case of visits to specialist medical departments, which do not affect medical support services and hospital practices that are responsive to the delivery of care services resulting from medical support services that are inseparable in integrated services as well as health care following medical ethics.

This study has a novelty in understanding the implications of green practice in determining patient satisfaction in medical specialist department as the epicenter of hospital services and the main object of assessment for the quality of hospital services.

Providing high-quality and cost-efficient care of older people is an important development priority for many health and social care systems in the world. This paper suggests a shift from acute, episodic and reactive hospital-centered care toward longitudinal, person-centered and proactive home-centered care. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge of a comprehensive development strategy for designing and providing home-centered care of older people.

The study design is based on qualitative research with an inductive approach. The authors study development initiatives at the national, regional and local levels of the Swedish health and social care system. The data collection methods included interviews (n = 54), meeting observations (n = 25) and document studies (n = 59).

The authors describe findings related to policy actions and system changes, attempts to achieve collaboration, integration and coordination, new forms of care offerings, characteristics of work settings at home and differences in patients' roles and participation at home and in the hospital.

The authors suggest home-centered care as a solution for providing person-centered and integrated care of older people and give examples of how this can be achieved.

The authors outline five propositions for research and development related to national policies, service modularity as a solution for customized and coordinated care, developing human resources and infrastructure for home settings, expanding services that enable older people living at home and patient co-creation.

A large number of studies indicate that coercive forms of organizational control and performance management in health care services often backfire and initiate dysfunctional consequences. The purpose of this article is to discuss new approaches to performance management in health care services when the purpose is to support innovative changes in the delivery of services.

The article represents cross-boundary work as the theoretical and empirical material used to discuss and reconsider performance management comes from several relevant research disciplines, including systematic reviews of audit and feedback interventions in health care and extant theories of human motivation and organizational control.

An enabling approach to performance management in health care services can potentially contribute to innovative changes. Key design elements to operationalize such an approach are a formative and learning-oriented use of performance measures, an appeal to self- and social-approval mechanisms when providing feedback and support for local goals and action plans that fit specific conditions and challenges.

The article suggests how to operationalize an enabling approach to performance management in health care services. The framework is consistent with new governance and managerial approaches emerging in public sector organizations more generally, supporting a higher degree of professional autonomy and the use of nonfinancial incentives.

The various quality improvement (QI) frameworks and maturity models described in the health services literature consider some aspects of QI while excluding others. This paper aims to present a concerted attempt to create a quality improvement maturity model (QIMM) derived from holistic principles underlying the successful implementation of system-wide QI programmes.

A hybrid methodology involving a systematic review (Phase 1) of over 270 empirical research articles and books developed the basis for the proposed QIMM. It was followed by expert interviews to refine the core constructs and ground the proposed QIMM in contemporary QI practice (Phase 2). The experts included academics in two academic conferences and 59 QI managers from the New Zealand health-care system. In-depth interviews were conducted with QI managers to ascertain their views on the QIMM and its applicability in their respective health organisations (HOs).

The QIMM consists of four dimensions of organisational maturity, namely, strategic, process, supply chain and philosophical maturity. These dimensions progress through six stages, namely, identification, ad-hoc, formal, process-driven, optimised enterprise and finally a way of life. The application of the QIMM by the QI managers revealed that the scope of QI and the breadth of the principles adopted by the QI managers and their HOs in New Zealand is limited.

The importance of QI in health systems cannot be overstated. The proposed QIMM can help HOs diagnose their current state and provide a guide to action achieving a desirable state of quality improvement maturity. This QIMM avoids reliance on any single QI methodology. HOs – using the QIMM – should retain full control over the process of selecting any QI methodology or may even cherry-pick principles to suit their needs as long as they understand and appreciate the true nature and scope of quality overstated. The proposed QIMM can help HOs diagnose their current state and provide a guide to action achieving a desirable state of quality improvement maturity. This QIMM avoids reliance on any single QI methodology. HOs – using the QIMM – should retain full control over the process of selecting any QI methodology or may even cherry-pick principles to suit their needs as long as they understand and appreciate the true nature and scope of quality.

This paper contributes new knowledge by presenting a maturity model with an integrated set of quality principles for HOs and their extended supply networks.

Value-based healthcare suggested using patient-reported information to complement the information available in the medical records and administrative healthcare data to provide insights into patients' perceptions of satisfaction, experience and self-reported outcomes. However, little attention has been devoted to questions about factors fostering the use of patient-reported information to create value at the system level.

Action research design is carried out to elicit possible triggers using the case of patient-reported experience and outcome data for breast cancer women along their clinical pathway in the clinical breast network of Tuscany (Italy).

The case shows that communication and engagement of multi-stakeholder representation are needed for making information actionable in a multi-level, multispecialty care pathway organized in a clinical network; moreover, political and managerial support from higher level governance is a stimulus for legitimizing the use for quality improvement. At the organizational level, an external facilitator disclosing and discussing real-world uses of collected data is a trigger to link measures to action. Also, clinical champion(s) and clear goals are key success factors. Nonetheless, resource munificent and dedicated information support tools together with education and learning routines are enabling factors.

Current literature focuses on key factors that impact performance information use often considering unidimensional performance and internal sources of information. The use of patient/user-reported information is not yet well-studied especially in supporting quality improvement in multi-stakeholder governance. The work appears relevant for the implications it carries, especially for policymakers and public sector managers when confronting the gap in patient-reported measures for quality improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of artificial intelligence (AI) and other AI-enabled technologies and to describe how COVID-19 affects various industries such as health care, manufacturing, retail, food services, education, media and entertainment, banking and insurance, travel and tourism. Furthermore, the authors discuss the tactics in which information technology is used to implement business strategies to transform businesses and to incentivise the implementation of these technologies in current or future emergency situations.

The review provides the rapidly growing literature on the use of smart technology during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The 127 empirical articles the authors have identified suggest that 39 forms of smart technologies have been used, ranging from artificial intelligence to computer vision technology. Eight different industries have been identified that are using these technologies, primarily food services and manufacturing. Further, the authors list 40 generalised types of activities that are involved including providing health services, data analysis and communication. To prevent the spread of illness, robots with artificial intelligence are being used to examine patients and give drugs to them. The online execution of teaching practices and simulators have replaced the classroom mode of teaching due to the epidemic. The AI-based Blue-dot algorithm aids in the detection of early warning indications. The AI model detects a patient in respiratory distress based on face detection, face recognition, facial action unit detection, expression recognition, posture, extremity movement analysis, visitation frequency detection, sound pressure detection and light level detection. The above and various other applications are listed throughout the paper.

Research is largely delimited to the area of COVID-19-related studies. Also, bias of selective assessment may be present. In Indian context, advanced technology is yet to be harnessed to its full extent. Also, educational system is yet to be upgraded to add these technologies potential benefits on wider basis.

First, leveraging of insights across various industry sectors to battle the global threat, and smart technology is one of the key takeaways in this field. Second, an integrated framework is recommended for policy making in this area. Lastly, the authors recommend that an internet-based repository should be developed, keeping all the ideas, databases, best practices, dashboard and real-time statistical data.

As the COVID-19 is a relatively recent phenomenon, such a comprehensive review does not exist in the extant literature to the best of the authors’ knowledge. The review is rapidly emerging literature on smart technology use during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Integrated care (IC) is mainly studied from the perspectives of organisations or employees. However, less research is focussed on how patients themselves experience person-centred (PC) IC in practice. This context-specific, small-scale study examines what PC-IC means to older patients who went through joint replacement surgery (JRS).

The data consists of ten in-depth interviews of older patients, focussing on their experiences of care during their patient journey related to joint knee or hip replacement surgery. The data were analysed with thematic analysis.

Three central dimensions of PC-IC for older patients were identified: information sharing, continuity of care and compassionate encountering. Human validation and compassionate encountering were experienced as important aspects of PC-IC. Compassionate encountering was concretised through professionals’ very small everyday practices, which made the patient feel comfortable and respected. Instead, probably due to the medical and quite straight-forward nature of the joint replacement care process, patients seem to be pleased to trust the expertise of professionals and did not necessarily expect an active role or participation in the decision-making.

This Finnish case study focusses on the patients’ authentic perceptions of what is central to person-centred IC in the specific context of JRS.

The purpose of this review paper was identifying barriers to the use of telemedicine systems in primary health-care individual level among professionals.

This study used Scopus and PubMed databases for scientific records identification. A systematic review of the literature structured by PRISMA guidelines was conducted on 37 included papers published between 2009 and 2019. A qualitative approach was used to synthesize insights into using telemedicine by primary care professionals.

Three barriers were identified and classified: system quality, data quality and service quality barriers. System complexity in terms of usability, system unreliability, security and privacy concerns, lack of integration and inflexibility of systems-in-use are related to system quality. Data quality barriers are data inaccuracy, data timeliness issues, data conciseness concerns and lack of data uniqueness. Finally, service reliability concerns, lack of technical support and lack of user training have been categorized as service quality barriers.

This review identified and mapped emerging themes of barriers to the use of telemedicine systems. This paper also through a new conceptualization of telemedicine use from perspectives of the primary care professionals contributes to informatics literature and system usage practices.