Rebalancing health systems toward community-based care: The role of subsectoral politics

Examining the underpinnings of decisions to allocate public resources to social care: A systematic review

The increasing demand for social care, resulting from population ageing and the growing prevalence of chronic diseases and disabilities puts pressure on public resources. This trend necessitates decisions on the allocation of those resources to social care services. Several states have established explicit decision-making frameworks to inform resource-allocation decisions on healthcare to safeguard efficient and equitable access to healthcare services despite the scarcity of resources. While the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of such decisions on healthcare have been scrutinised, the underpinnings of resource-allocation decisions on social care remain unexplored. This study aims to contribute to filling this literature gap. We conducted a systematic literature search on seven databases following PRISMA guidelines. Based on the 42 articles included, we identified five different decision-makers (national, and local (health) authorities, case managers, service providers, and formal caregivers) responsible for resource-allocation decisions on social care on the macro, meso, and micro levels. We further developed a thematic framework consisting of 25 categories of underpinnings grouped under six themes that successively describe (cultural) norms and values, objectives, considerations, trade-offs, strategies, and factors that underlie and influence resource-allocation decisions. Our findings highlight the importance decision-makers attach to the provision of social care and the importance of informal caregivers for the sustainability of the social-care system on all decision levels. Furthermore, our findings highlight the strong competition with the healthcare system over resources and responsibilities, resulting in pressure on social care resource-allocation decision-makers to meet (post-)acute health needs in the short-term at the expense of longer-term social care needs. The multiplicity of decision-makers and variety of underpinnings signal the complexity of resource-allocation decisions on social care. To counterbalance the potential consequences of this complexity such as the potentially inequitable access to social care, decision-makers are advised to increase the consistency and transparency of decisions.

How Community-Based Health and Social Care Professionals Support Unpaid Caregivers: Experiences From One Health Authority in Ontario, Canada

In Ontario, Canada, rising rates of caregiver distress have been the 'canary in the coal mine' for a health system out of balance with the needs of an ageing population. Community-based health and social care professionals are well placed to play an important role in the caregiver support process; however, a gap has remained in the understanding of if and how caregiver support strategies are operationalized or experienced by community service providers (CSPs). The goal of this study was to describe how CSPs interpreted policy and how those interpretations may enable their work in supporting unpaid caregivers. Using a qualitative constructionist design, we interviewed 24 participants and reviewed 92 publicly available documents. Braun and Clarke's method of thematic analysis was used for analysis strategy. Four overarching themes were identified: (1) community care as a priority, (2) sidewalk accountability, (3) creative care planning through partnerships, and (4) challenges to care delivery. We found that the importance of caregivers to the health system was reflected in organizational policy and strategy. There is an opportunity to improve health outcome for caregivers and the population alike through strong leadership and a clear shared vision. Our findings also suggested that social capital was a significant factor in enabling providers in their work, leveraging long-standing relationships, and accumulated local knowledge to implement highly creative care plans.

Incongruous identities: Mental distress and burnout disparities in LGBTQ+ health care professional populations

Health care professionals are chronically overworked due to structural workplace demands and institutional challenges [1]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, US biomedical health care professionals experienced additional environmental strain [2]. Health care professionals who occupy socio-politically minoritized identities are more likely to report symptoms of distress and workplace overburden than their counterparts [2]. While minority stress and identity formation theories explain the relationship between socially constructed identity and environmental strain, these theories remain largely unexplored in LGBTQ+ health care professional populations. Furthermore, contemporary investigations into health care professional burnout and mental distress fail to include differential impacts of identity-based stress, particularly within LGBTQ+ groups. This paper proposes a theoretical explanation for differential stress experiences by health care professionals and calls for research to investigate identity congruence as a key aspect of professionalization in medical schools. Health professions researchers need to attend to identity-based stress models to address discriminatory experiences with burnout and mental distress.

Policy programs and service delivery models for older adults and their caregivers: Comparing three provinces and two states

Despite an increase in prevalence of complex chronic conditions and dementia, long-term care services are being continuously pushed out of institutional settings and into the home and community. The majority of people living with dementia in Canada and the United States (U.S.) live at home with support provided by family, friends or other unpaid caregivers. Ten dementia care policy programs and service delivery models across five different North American jurisdictions in Canada and the U.S. are compared deductively using a comparative policy framework originally developed by Richard Rose. One aim of this research was to understand how different jurisdictions have worked to reduce the fragmentation of dementia care. Another aim is to assess, relying on the theory of smart policy layering, the extent to which these policy efforts 'patch' health system structures or add to system redundancies. We find that these programs were introduced in a manner that did not fully consider how to patch current programs and services and thus risk creating further system redundancies. The implementation of these policy programs may have led to policy layers, and potentially to tension among different policies and unintended consequences. One approach to reducing these negative impacts is to implement evaluative efforts that assess 'goodness of fit'. The degree to which these programs have embedded these efforts into an existing policy infrastructure successfully is low, with the possible exception of one program in NY.

Moral distress experienced by community service providers of home health and social care in Ontario, Canada

Moral distress occurs when one knows a morally correct action to take but feels powerless to act the way one believes is right. Moral distress has been studied in many contexts but there remains a gap in our understanding of the phenomenon as it manifests outside of hospital-based settings. The aim of this study was to explore the nature of the moral distress experience among community-based health and social care professionals working with older adults and their caregivers. Using a qualitative constructionist design, we interviewed 24 participants from a single health authority in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Participants were both urban and rurally based. Data were collected in the winter and summer of 2020 and analysed using Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis strategy. Three factors: reluctant clients, human resource shortages and system challenges, contributed to the creation of perceived morally precarious care plans, resulting in symptoms of moral distress. Study participants described frustration, guilt, anger, and grief at not being able to act consistently with their core values and provide the amount and/or quality of care their clients and unpaid caregivers deserved. We consider possible reasons for our finding that community service providers did not always respond to the consequences of moral distress symptoms in a manner similar to those in acute care contexts. Our findings suggest that study participants may have been able to cultivate moral resilience in the face of moral distress through the positive reframing of adversity and therefore maintain their overall sense of moral integrity.

Active Health Governance—A Conceptual Framework Based on a Narrative Literature Review

Health policies are regarded as a governance mechanism crucial for reducing health inequity and improving overall health outcomes. Policies that address chronic conditions or health inequity suggest a governance shift toward active health over past decades. However, the current literature in health policy largely focused on some specific health policy changes and their tangible outcomes, or on specific inequality of health policies in gender, age, racial, or economic status, short of comprehensively responding to and addressing the shift. This is exacerbated further by a common confusion that equates health policy with health care policy, which has been burdened by increased population ageing, growing inequalities, rising expenditures, and growing social expectations. This study conducted a narrative literature review to comprehensively and critically analyze the most current knowledge on health policy in order to help us establish a theoretical framework on active health governance. The comprehensive framework proposed in this paper identifies the main elements of a well-defined active health governance and the interactions between these elements. The proposed framework is composed of four elements (governance for health, social determinants of health, lifestyle determinants of health, and health system) and three approaches (whole-of-government approach, whole-of-society approach, and lifespan/life-course approach) that are dynamically interacted to achieve two active health outcomes (health equity and health improvement). The framework provides a conceptual solution to the issues of current literature on health policy and practically serves as a new guide for health policymaking.

Comparison of outpatient coverage in Canada: Assistive and medical devices

Outpatient technologies are important for maintaining health and overall quality of life, yet the degree of access and coverage of these technologies remains variable within and across jurisdictions. In Canada, assistive technologies are not included in universal health coverage, and are not subject to the Canada Health Act's criteria and conditions that provinces and territories must fulfill to receive the full federal cash contribution under the Canada Health Transfer. As such, the thirteen Canadian provincial and territorial governments make separate decisions on programs and coverage. Drawing on the WHO Universal Coverage Cube we compare who gets access, the types of technologies that can be accessed, and the level of coverage (total costs covered) in Canada. Overall, each Canadian jurisdiction had at least one publicly supported program. All relied on a 'health assessment' of an individual's need to determine eligibility. Income and eligibility for social assistance was used as eligibility criteria in 6 of the 13 jurisdictions. Mobility aids as well as audio, visual, and communication aids were included in all jurisdictions. While some programs offered full financial support for some technologies, forms of cost sharing were common. The results are discussed in the context of international experiences, demographic changes, and health system trends to highlight areas for policy learning.

Learning from health system reform trajectories in seven Canadian provinces

In publicly funded health systems, reform efforts have proliferated to adapt to increasingly complex demands. In Canada, prior research (Lazar et al., 2013, Paradigm Freeze: Why is it so Hard to Reform Health Care in Canada?, McGill-Queen's Press) found that reforms at the end of the 20th century failed to change the fundamentals of the Canadian system based on physician independence and assured universal coverage only for medical and hospital services. This paper focuses on reforms since the turn of the millennium to explore the transformative capacities developed in seven provinces within this system architecture. Longitudinal case studies, based on scientific and grey literature, and interviews with key informants, trace the patterns of reform in each province and reveal five objectives that, to varying degrees, preoccupied reformers: (1) address chronic disease, (2) align health system actors with provincial objectives, (3) shift from hospital to community-based care, (4) integrate physicians, and (5) develop improvement capacities. The range of strategies adopted to achieve these objectives in different provinces is compared to identify emerging pathways of reform and extract lessons for future reformers. We find significant cross-learning between provinces, but also note an emergent dimension to reforms, where multiple strategies aggregate through time to create unique patterns, presenting their own set of possibilities and limitations for the future.

Two-Step Floating Catchment Area Model-Based Evaluation of Community Care Facilities' Spatial Accessibility in Xi'an, China

Due to the rapid increase in the number of elderly people in Chinese cities, the development and planning of aged care facilities, and particularly community care facilities, which will gradually become the mainstream choice for the elderly in China, is becoming an important topic for urban sustainability. Previous studies have shown that the number and scale of aged care facilities in many cities are far from meeting the needs of the elderly and the overall occupation rate is low. Some of these cities are still expanding and some are undergoing urban renovation. In this process, the scientific planning of community care facilities to promote efficient use of facility resources has become an urgent problem that needs to be solved. In this study, the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method and a potential model based on the Geographic Information System (GIS) were used to carry out a scientific evaluation of the spatial accessibility of community care facilities in the Beilin district of Xi'an. The aims were to explore the best quantitative research methods for assessing the distribution of Xi'an community care facilities' spatial accessibility, provide ideas for similar studies in the future, and further the understanding of spatial allocation of urban community care facilities resources.

"It's More than Just Needing money": The Value of Supporting Networks of Care

It is well established in research, practice, and policy that unpaid caregivers (family and friends of people with care needs) experience stress in their role. Supports that have been put in place by policy planners and program developers to support caregivers may not be accessed by caregivers at all or may do little to reduce their stress. Accessing personal resources (education, finances), in addition to social resources (individual connections) and societal resources (community supports) are critical in fostering resilience in caregivers (helping them adapt to stress and adversity). Social capital theorists argue that creating connections at various levels can improve access to resources. This research, through qualitative interviews (n = 21), identifies the different levels of resources required to address the needs of caregivers. Our findings indicate that interventions that focus on access to personal-level resources (education, funding) are important, but are on their own insufficient. Of more importance were interventions that work to improve relationships between formal providers and families; access to interdisciplinary teams; cross-sectoral collaborations; and inter-organization relationships, highlighting that a system that works together is likely to improve caregivers' access to resources.

Coordinating primary care services: A case of policy layering

In this paper, we discuss the processes of policy layering as they relate to health care reform. We focus on efforts to achieve systems of coordinated primary care, and demonstrate that material change can be achieved through processes of incremental policy layering. Such processes also have a high potential for unintended consequences. Thus, we propose new principles of 'smart' policy layering to guide decision-makers to do incrementalism better. We then apply these principles to recent primary care reforms in Ontario, Canada. This paper conceptualizes 'smart' policy layering as a mechanism to achieve productive policy change in contexts with strong institutional barriers to reform.