Ireland has a poor track record of introducing organisational change in the health system, often causing great turmoil to the staff without improving access or quality of care for the people who use the service. We also have a health system that is overly-dependent on hospitals, difficult to access and fragmented in nature.
The Slaintecare Implementation Strategy outlines how Regional Integrated Care Organisations (RICOs) will be the mechanism to fund and provide integrated care locally. It is imperative that these new structures are designed and implemented so that they result in universal access to more responsive care, which better meets the needs of individuals and communities.
Through analysing, synthesising and translating international and national theory, evidence and experience, this research will feed into the real-time RICO development process. Using methods including rapid reviews, mapping exercises, documentary analysis, key informant interviews, participant observation, secondary analysis of data and co-design techniques, findings will be instrumental to designing a Living Implementation Framework with Evaluation (LIFE), which is expected to be utilised beyond the timeframe of this project. Central to this project will be identifying the best data sources to measure impact of RICOs on integrated care and ensuring evidence-informed decision-making.
This research will be carried out by the Trinity team, whose technical advice formed the basis of the Slaintecare Report, in partnership with the most senior leadership in the Department of Health, the Slaintecare Implementation Office, the HSE and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policy.
The real-time, iterative, nature of this research means it will impact as the project progresses, continuously learning and refining with the aim of developing an evidence-informed Regional Integrated Care Organisation (RICO) Living Implementation Framework with Evaluation (LIFE), which facilitates bounded regional autonomy within national policy, that is person-centred, empowers staff and communities, is effective and efficient.
