Topic: The economics of care integration

Across OECD countries, new care models are being implemented to increase the “integration” of care including bundling payments, the use of performance-related incentives, and different structures for commissioning and providing services. It is believed that better coordination of the different elements of the health and social care system will improve the wellbeing of patients and their families, improve the efficiency of the agencies involved in the delivery of care, and reduce system costs.  It remains unclear, however, how to design optimal incentive mechanisms to improve coordination of care.  Evidence on different integration models as to how they affect outcomes and costs is also weak. 

The intent of this proposed special issue is to promote papers that apply rigorous economic analyses to inform the design and evaluation of integrated care systems. Papers can address both the theoretical and empirical analysis of the structures, mechanisms and incentives that promote integration across the different elements of the health and social care systems. It is expected that papers will address issues including:
•	system design (e.g. issues arising from vertical and horizontal integration of provision; the impact of different contracting models), 
•	funding (e.g. issues concerning risk pooling, bundled payments, capitation, etc.),
•	interagency incentives (e.g. the design and application of different payment structures including payment for performance), 
•	analysis of the cost-effectiveness of integrated care models. 

Although priority will be given to papers exploring integration between health and social care services, papers examining integration and coordination of components within the health care system will also be considered.


Submission process

A 400 word abstract summarizing the aims and objectives, economic framework, analytical methods and data sources, results and conclusions should be sent to [log in to unmask] by 01/06/15. A selection of up to 8 papers will be shortlisted by 15/06/15. A first draft of the selected papers will be discussed by contributors during a two-day workshop at London School of Economics (LSE) on the 14th and 15th of January 2016. 

A selection of papers from this workshop will be published, subject to normal refereeing procedures, in a special issue of the Journal of Health Economics (JHE). This workshop issue will be edited by Jose-Luis Fernandez, Alistair McGuire and Andrew Street. Final versions of the manuscripts for full peer-review will be submitted on 01/05/2016.


About the editors

Dr Jose-Luis Fernandez is Deputy Director and Principal Research Fellow at
PSSRU, London School of Economics. A health and social care economist, he specialises in ageing-related policies, the interaction between health and social care, and the economic evaluation of health and social care services. He is director of the International Long-term care Policy Network (ILPN) linking academics and policy makers on the analysis of long-term care. He is deputy director of the Economics of Social and Health Care Research Unit and of the Quality and Outcomes Research Unit. He has advised bodies such as the English Department of Health, the UK Treasury, the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), the European Union and the World Health Organisation.

Professor Alistair McGuire [B.A. (Econ); M.Litt (Econ); Phd (Econ)] is the Professor of Health Economics at LSE Health and Social Care, within the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to this he was Professor of Economics at City University, London after being a Tutor in Economics at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He has been a visiting Professor at Harvard University, the University of Sydney, the University of York and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He has been interested in the economics of health care for over 30 years, with extensive teaching experience and has written numerous books, articles and reports in this area on a wide range of subject matter. He has been involved in a number of major clinical trials as the lead health economist. He has also acted as an advisor to a number of governments and governmental bodies, as well as for a number of international bodies (including the World Bank and WHO) and pharmaceutical companies and health care insurance companies.

Professor Andrew Street is a Professor of Health Economics and Director of the Health Policy team in the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. He is also Director of the Economics of Social and Health Care Research Unit (ESHCRU), a joint collaboration between the Centre for Health Economics and the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) at the London School of Economics and the University of Kent.  He is an editor of the Journal of Health Economics, and currently serves as a board member on the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research programme and as chair of the Welsh Health Economics Support Service Advisory Group. He is an external affiliate to the Department of Business and Economics at the University of Southern Denmark.