SUSTAIN – sustainable tailored integrated care for older people in Europe

SUSTAIN – sustainable tailored integrated care for older people in Europe

Integrated care (IC) is defined as those initiatives that proactively seek to structure and coordinate care in home environments and improve health outcomes while constraining health care expenditures. ‘Older people’ are defined as European citizens aged 65+ with multiple health and social care needs. The focus on this group reflects the general increase in complexity of care with age.

SUSTAIN’s overall aims are to improve established IC initiatives for older people living at home with multiple health and social care needs and to ensure that these improvements can be adapted and applied to other health systems and regions in Europe.

Core elements are:

• a well-coordinated and proactive approach to health and social care needs;
• patient-centredness involving older people in decision-making and taking their individual needs into account
• delivery of multiple interventions at the same time
• involvement of professionals from multiple disciplines.

The project will

• Identify established integrated care initiatives and conduct baseline assessments to examine their patient-centredness, prevention orientation, efficiency, resilience to crises, safety and sustainability;
• Improve established integrated care initiatives based on the outcomes of the baseline assessments in co-creation with local key stakeholders and implement these improvements;
• Evaluate the implementation process and identify how the established integrated care initiatives have improved;
• Assess the applicability and adaptability of improved integrated care initiatives;
• design and implement dissemination strategies.

Funder/funding stream

EC Horizon 2020

Funding: €584,119