The opportunities and challenges of integrating health and social care in post-stroke patient journey: perceptions of Estonian professionals

Kadi Lubi, Helin Pevkur, Katrin Gross-Paju, Maarja-Liis Elland and Peeter Ross

Health Policy, 2025, vol. 159, issue C

Abstract: Although strokes are one of the leading causes of death worldwide, their mortality is declining and the demand for integrated care is increasing. Therefore, changes in current health policy approaches are needed. In 2019, the Estonian Health Insurance Fund initiated a pilot study to examine an integrated health and social care approach in the journey of post-stroke patients. West Tallinn Central Hospital piloted the early involvement of community-based social care professionals of the local government. This research was conducted to examine the perceptions regarding an integrated care approach for post-stroke patients of all eleven participants via semi-structured in-depth interviews. By using a qualitative content analysis, participants’ experience with the selected approach were analyzed. The findings highlighted the potential and appropriateness of involving community-based social care professionals in the early phase of post-stroke management as part of a multidisciplinary team to enable a holistic, person-centered integrated care approach. The main challenges are the lack of different resources (e.g., specific knowledge, human resource, time), interoperability between health and social care electronic systems, and perceived inappropriateness in addressing a potential change in processes and with involved stakeholders. Thus, a comprehensive health policy and social care policy should be used to tackle these challenges to successfully implement an integrated care model with a multidisciplinary approach.

Keywords: Stroke; Patient journey; Integrated care model; Person-centeredness; Estonia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851025001332
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:159:y:2025:i:c:s0168851025001332

DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2025.105377

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().