Caring For People With Multiple Chronic Conditions In Italy : Policy And Practices

• Background: An estimated 50 million people in the European Union live with multiple chronic diseases. In Italy, around 26.6% of the population aged 16 to 64 years, reported to have at least one long-standing illness or health problem in 2011. Moreover, around 46% of the population over 50 is suffering from multimorbidity. Some programmes addressing adult or older people with multimorbidity have been introduced.Methods: Data for the ICARE4EU study were collected in the first half of 2014. Eligible programmes focussed on providing care for adult people with two or more medically diagnosed chronic or long lasting diseases (at least onesomatic), involved formalised cooperation between two or more services (at least one medical) and evaluation was available. For each programme an on-line questionnaire was completed and included four main subjects: Patientcentredness, Management, Use of E-health technologies, and Financing systems.Results: In Italy, four programmes met the inclusion criteria. They address both daily patient care and policy/managerial levels. Integration of care services, improved collaboration between care providers, changes in resource utilisation and involvement of informal carers have been observed. In two programmes, older patients are addressed as specific subgroup and in two cases animprovement in the use of E-health tools has emerged.Conclusions: In Italy, new policies and integrated care programmes addressing multimorbidity have been recently introduced in some areas, with good preliminary results.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Annan medicin och hälsovetenskap -- Gerontologi, medicinsk/hälsovetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Other Medical and Health Sciences -- Gerontology, specialising in Medical and Health Sciences (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Gerontologi

Gerontology

Hälsoinformatik

Health Informatics

Sociology

Sociologi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)