Evaluation of integrated care: an updated rapid review
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This study updates and expands upon the seminal review by Strandberg-Larsen and Krasnik (2009) by examining evaluation methods for integrated healthcare delivery published between 2009 and 2022. Integrated care aims to enhance care coordination and patient-centeredness by bridging healthcare silos; however, evaluating such complex systems remains a challenge. Design/methodology/approach A rapid review methodology was employed, following Cochrane Rapid Review guidance. Four databases (EMBASE, MEDLINE/PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane Library) were searched using a comprehensive set of integrated care-related terms. Inclusion criteria were based on structural, cultural and process aspects of integration, as well as methodological criteria such as theoretical grounding, data type and internal validity. A 10-point framework was used to classify identified studies. Findings Out of over 40,000 initial records, 11 studies met the inclusion criteria. Quantitative approaches were dominant, with only one study using a mixed-methods design. Tools such as the Practice Integration Profile and B3-Maturity Model addressed structural readiness, while others emphasized cultural elements like collaboration and accountability. Process-focused evaluations offered insights into coordination and stakeholder experiences. Findings reveal an over-reliance on quantitative tools and call for the integration of qualitative measures to better capture the dynamic, context-specific nature of integrated care. Originality/value This review provides updated, evidence-informed recommendations for evaluating integrated healthcare systems. It advocates for holistic, flexible and mixed-methods frameworks to support health leaders and policymakers in advancing integrated care.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it