Call for Abstracts: Special Issue International Comparisons of High-Need, High-Cost Patients
Special Issue: International Comparisons of High-Need, High-Cost Patients: New Directions in Research and Policy
Sponsored by: The Health Foundation
Submission deadline: November 30, 2020
Health Services Research (HSR) and the International Collaborative on Costs, Outcomes and Needs In Care (ICCONIC) are partnering to publish a Special Issue on International Comparisons of High-Need, High-Cost Patients: New Directions in Research and Policy.
Health systems around the world have similar goals: maximizing quality of care for their populations, offering services that are responsive to patient needs and providing value for money. International comparisons can be a useful tool to provide national policy makers and clinical leaders with a benchmark that helps determine whether countries are achieving their goals. However, due to the inherent gaps in data, underdeveloped analytic methodologies and lack of consideration of key structural differences across health systems, poor comparisons can lead to unwarranted policy interpretations with adverse consequences for policy makers. Properly conducted cross-national comparisons can provide a rich source of data to learn from and inform health policy.
One key challenge facing many health systems is how to best design services to provide care to a small number of high-need, high-cost individuals. These patients are expensive and often the most vulnerable to experiencing the ill effects of poor quality care. In recent years, policy makers and clinical leaders have increased their efforts to understand how best to care for this heterogeneous group of patients with a diverse set of needs stemming from multiple physical conditions, mental and behavioural health issues and complex social problems. However, despite the enormous importance of this population, there are limited data on how different nations and health systems manage these patients.
Therefore, the goal of this Special Issue is to highlight cutting-edge work that showcase the potential to learn from international comparisons of high-need, high-cost individuals. A portion of the Special Issue will feature the work of the International Collaborative on Costs, Outcomes and Needs in Care (ICCONIC). ICCONIC consists of 12 partners from North America, Europe and the Pacific who use national and regional patient-level datasets to explore variations in the utilization and costs of health services for particular types of high-need individuals. The rest of the Special Issue will consist of invited submissions that examine areas related to the delivery of care for high-need, high cost-individuals.
Key dates proposed:
- November 30, 2020: Submission deadline for abstracts for the Special Issue.
- December 21, 2020: Notification sent to authors of manuscript invitation for Special Issue.
- March 1, 2021: Submission deadline of manuscripts for the Special Issue.
- October 1 2021: Notification of assignment of accepted manuscripts to the Special Issue.
- December, 2021: Print Publication Date for Special Issue.
Questions can be directed to Kristen Riley at kriley@hsph.harvard.edu