BACKGROUND: A key function of health systems is implementing interventions to improve health, but coverage of essential health interventions remains low in low-income countries. Implementing interventions can be challenging, particularly if it entails complex changes in clinical routines; in collaborative patterns among different healthcare providers and disciplines; in the behaviour of providers, patients or other stakeholders; or in the organisation of care. Decision-makers may use a range of strategies to implement health interventions, and these choices should be based on evidence of the strategies' effectiveness.
OBJECTIVES: To provide an overview of the available evidence from up-to-date systematic reviews about the effects of implementation strategies for health systems in low-income countries. Secondary objectives include identifying needs and priorities for future evaluations and systematic reviews on alternative implementation strategies and informing refinements of the framework for implementation strategies presented in the overview.
METHODS: We searched Health Systems Evidence in November 2010 and PDQ-Evidence up to December 2016 for systematic reviews. We did not apply any date, language or publication status limitations in the searches. We included well-conducted systematic reviews of studies that assessed the effects of implementation strategies on professional practice and patient outcomes and that were published after April 2005. We excluded reviews with limitations important enough to compromise the reliability of the review findings. Two overview authors independently screened reviews, extracted data and assessed the certainty of evidence using GRADE. We prepared SUPPORT Summaries for eligible reviews, including key messages, 'Summary of findings' tables (using GRADE to assess the certainty of the evidence) and assessments of the relevance of findings to low-income countries.
MAIN RESULTS: We identified 7272 systematic reviews and included 39 of them in this overview. An additional four reviews provided supplementary information. Of the 39 reviews, 32 had only minor limitations and 7 had important methodological limitations. Most studies in the reviews were from high-income countries. There were no studies from low-income countries in eight reviews.Implementation strategies addressed in the reviews were grouped into four categories – strategies targeting:1. healthcare organisations (e.g. strategies to change organisational culture; 1 review);2. healthcare workers by type of intervention (e.g. printed educational materials; 14 reviews);3. healthcare workers to address a specific problem (e.g. unnecessary antibiotic prescription; 9 reviews);4. healthcare recipients (e.g. medication adherence; 15 reviews).Overall, we found the following interventions to have desirable effects on at least one outcome with moderate- or high-certainty evidence and no moderate- or high-certainty evidence of undesirable effects.1.Strategies targeted at healthcare workers: educational meetings, nutrition training of health workers, educational outreach, practice facilitation, local opinion leaders, audit and feedback, and tailored interventions.2.Strategies targeted at healthcare workers for specific types of problems: training healthcare workers to be more patient-centred in clinical consultations, use of birth kits, strategies such as clinician education and patient education to reduce antibiotic prescribing in ambulatory care settings, and in-service neonatal emergency care training.3. Strategies targeted at healthcare recipients: mass media interventions to increase uptake of HIV testing; intensive self-management and adherence, intensive disease management programmes to improve health literacy; behavioural interventions and mobile phone text messages for adherence to antiretroviral therapy; a one time incentive to start or continue tuberculosis prophylaxis; default reminders for patients being treated for active tuberculosis; use of sectioned polythene bags for adherence to malaria medication; community-based health education, and reminders and recall strategies to increase vaccination uptake; interventions to increase uptake of cervical screening (invitations, education, counselling, access to health promotion nurse and intensive recruitment); health insurance information and application support.
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Reliable systematic reviews have evaluated a wide range of strategies for implementing evidence-based interventions in low-income countries. Most of the available evidence is focused on strategies targeted at healthcare workers and healthcare recipients and relates to process-based outcomes. Evidence of the effects of strategies targeting healthcare organisations is scarce.
BACKGROUND: One target of the Sustainable Development Goals is to achieve "universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all". A fundamental concern of governments in striving for this goal is how to finance such a health system. This concern is very relevant for low-income countries.
OBJECTIVES: To provide an overview of the evidence from up-to-date systematic reviews about the effects of financial arrangements for health systems in low-income countries. Secondary objectives include identifying needs and priorities for future evaluations and systematic reviews on financial arrangements, and informing refinements in the framework for financial arrangements presented in the overview.
METHODS: We searched Health Systems Evidence in November 2010 and PDQ-Evidence up to 17 December 2016 for systematic reviews. We did not apply any date, language, or publication status limitations in the searches. We included well-conducted systematic reviews of studies that assessed the effects of financial arrangements on patient outcomes (health and health behaviours), the quality or utilisation of healthcare services, resource use, healthcare provider outcomes (such as sick leave), or social outcomes (such as poverty, employment, or financial burden of patients, e.g. out-of-pocket payment, catastrophic disease expenditure) and that were published after April 2005. We excluded reviews with limitations important enough to compromise the reliability of the findings. Two overview authors independently screened reviews, extracted data, and assessed the certainty of evidence using GRADE. We prepared SUPPORT Summaries for eligible reviews, including key messages, 'Summary of findings' tables (using GRADE to assess the certainty of the evidence), and assessments of the relevance of findings to low-income countries.
MAIN RESULTS: We identified 7272 reviews and included 15 in this overview, on: collection of funds (2 reviews), insurance schemes (1 review), purchasing of services (1 review), recipient incentives (6 reviews), and provider incentives (5 reviews). The reviews were published between 2008 and 2015; focused on 13 subcategories; and reported results from 276 studies: 115 (42%) randomised trials, 11 (4%) non-randomised trials, 23 (8%) controlled before-after studies, 51 (19%) interrupted time series, 9 (3%) repeated measures, and 67 (24%) other non-randomised studies. Forty-three per cent (119/276) of the studies included in the reviews took place in low- and middle-income countries. Collection of funds: the effects of changes in user fees on utilisation and equity are uncertain (very low-certainty evidence). It is also uncertain whether aid delivered under the Paris Principles (ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results, and mutual accountability) improves health outcomes compared to aid delivered without conforming to those principles (very low-certainty evidence). Insurance schemes: community-based health insurance may increase service utilisation (low-certainty evidence), but the effects on health outcomes are uncertain (very low-certainty evidence). It is uncertain whether social health insurance improves utilisation of health services or health outcomes (very low-certainty evidence). Purchasing of services: it is uncertain whether increasing salaries of public sector healthcare workers improves the quantity or quality of their work (very low-certainty evidence). Recipient incentives: recipient incentives may improve adherence to long-term treatments (low-certainty evidence), but it is uncertain whether they improve patient outcomes. One-time recipient incentives probably improve patient return for start or continuation of treatment (moderate-certainty evidence) and may improve return for tuberculosis test readings (low-certainty evidence). However, incentives may not improve completion of tuberculosis prophylaxis, and it is uncertain whether they improve completion of treatment for active tuberculosis. Conditional cash transfer programmes probably lead to an increase in service utilisation (moderate-certainty evidence), but their effects on health outcomes are uncertain. Vouchers may improve health service utilisation (low-certainty evidence), but the effects on health outcomes are uncertain (very low-certainty evidence). Introducing a restrictive cap may decrease use of medicines for symptomatic conditions and overall use of medicines, may decrease insurers' expenditures on medicines (low-certainty evidence), and has uncertain effects on emergency department use, hospitalisations, and use of outpatient care (very low-certainty evidence). Reference pricing, maximum pricing, and index pricing for drugs have mixed effects on drug expenditures by patients and insurers as well as the use of brand and generic drugs. Provider incentives: the effects of provider incentives are uncertain (very low-certainty evidence), including: the effects of provider incentives on the quality of care provided by primary care physicians or outpatient referrals from primary to secondary care, incentives for recruiting and retaining health professionals to serve in remote areas, and the effects of pay-for-performance on provider performance, the utilisation of services, patient outcomes, or resource use in low-income countries.
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Research based on sound systematic review methods has evaluated numerous financial arrangements relevant to low-income countries, targeting different levels of the health systems and assessing diverse outcomes. However, included reviews rarely reported social outcomes, resource use, equity impacts, or undesirable effects. We also identified gaps in primary research because of uncertainty about applicability of the evidence to low-income countries. Financial arrangements for which the effects are uncertain include external funding (aid), caps and co-payments, pay-for-performance, and provider incentives. Further studies evaluating the effects of these arrangements are needed in low-income countries. Systematic reviews should include all outcomes that are relevant to decision-makers and to people affected by changes in financial arrangements.
OBJECTIVE: To assess the available scientific evidence regarding the efficacy of interventions aimed to enhance medication adherence in patients with multiple chronic conditions (PMCC).
DESIGN: Overview of systematic reviews.
DATA SOURCES: The following databases were consulted (September 2013): Pubmed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, CRD and WoS to identify interventions aimed to enhance medication adherence in PMCC, or otherwise, patients with chronic diseases common in the PMCC, or polypharmacy.
STUDY SELECTION: Systematic reviews of clinical trials focused on PMCC or similar were included. They should compare the efficacy of any intervention aimed to improve compliance to prescribed and self-administered medications with clinical practice or other interventions.
DATA EXTRACTION: Information about the study population, nature of intervention and efficacy in terms of improved adherence was extracted.
RESULTS: 566 articles were retrieved of which 9 systematic reviews were included. None was specifically focused on PMCC but considered patients with chronic diseases common in the PMCC, patients with more than one chronic disease and polypharmacy. The overall effectiveness of interventions was modest without relevant differences between behavioural, educational and combined interventions. Some components of these interventions including patient counselling and regimen simplification appear to be effective tools in improving adherence in this population group.
CONCLUSION: There is a large heterogeneity of interventions aimed to improve adherence with modest efficacy, none in PMCC.
BACKGROUND: Many systematic reviews exist on interventions to improve safe and effective medicines use by consumers, but research is distributed across diseases, populations and settings. The scope and focus of such reviews also vary widely, creating challenges for decision-makers seeking to inform decisions by using the evidence on consumers’ medicines use.
This is an update of a 2011 overview of systematic reviews, which synthesises the evidence, irrespective of disease, medicine type, population or setting, on the effectiveness of interventions to improve consumers' medicines use.
OBJECTIVES: To assess the effects of interventions which target healthcare consumers to promote safe and effective medicines use, by synthesising review-level evidence.
SEARCH METHODS: We included systematic reviews published on the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects. We identified relevant reviews by handsearching databases from their start dates to March 2012.
SELECTION CRITERIA: We screened and ranked reviews based on relevance to consumers’ medicines use, using criteria developed for this overview.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: We used standardised forms to extract data, and assessed reviews for methodological quality using the AMSTAR tool. We used standardised language to summarise results within and across reviews; and gave bottom-line statements about intervention effectiveness. Two review authors screened and selected reviews, and extracted and analysed data. We used a taxonomy of interventions to categorise reviews and guide syntheses.
MAIN RESULTS: We included 75 systematic reviews of varied methodological quality. Reviews assessed interventions with diverse aims including support for behaviour change, risk minimisation and skills acquisition. No reviews aimed to promote systems-level consumer participation in medicines-related activities. Medicines adherence was the most frequently-reported outcome, but others such as knowledge, clinical and service-use outcomes were also reported. Adverse events were less commonly identified, while those associated with the interventions themselves, or costs, were rarely reported.
Looking across reviews, for most outcomes, medicines self-monitoring and self-management programmes appear generally effective to improve medicines use, adherence, adverse events and clinical outcomes; and to reduce mortality in people self-managing antithrombotic therapy. However, some participants were unable to complete these interventions, suggesting they may not be suitable for everyone.
Other promising interventions to improve adherence and other key medicines-use outcomes, which require further investigation to be more certain of their effects, include:
· simplified dosing regimens: with positive effects on adherence;
· interventions involving pharmacists in medicines management, such as medicines reviews (with positive effects on adherence and use, medicines problems and clinical outcomes) and pharmaceutical care services (consultation between pharmacist and patient to resolve medicines problems, develop a care plan and provide follow-up; with positive effects on adherence and knowledge).
Several other strategies showed some positive effects, particularly relating to adherence, and other outcomes, but their effects were less consistent overall and so need further study. These included:
· delayed antibiotic prescriptions: effective to decrease antibiotic use but with mixed effects on clinical outcomes, adverse effects and satisfaction;
· practical strategies like reminders, cues and/or organisers, reminder packaging and material incentives: with positive, although somewhat mixed effects on adherence;
· education delivered with self-management skills training, counselling, support, training or enhanced follow-up; information and counselling delivered together; or education/information as part of pharmacist-delivered packages of care: with positive effects on adherence, medicines use, clinical outcomes and knowledge, but with mixed effects in some studies;
· financial incentives: with positive, but mixed, effects on adherence.
Several strategies also showed promise in promoting immunisation uptake, but require further study to be more certain of their effects. These included organisational interventions; reminders and recall; financial incentives; home visits; free vaccination; lay health worker interventions; and facilitators working with physicians to promote immunisation uptake. Education and/or information strategies also showed some positive but even less consistent effects on immunisation uptake, and need further assessment of effectiveness and investigation of heterogeneity.
There are many different potential pathways through which consumers' use of medicines could be targeted to improve outcomes, and simple interventions may be as effective as complex strategies. However, no single intervention assessed was effective to improve all medicines-use outcomes across all diseases, medicines, populations or settings.
Even where interventions showed promise, the assembled evidence often only provided part of the picture: for example, simplified dosing regimens seem effective for improving adherence, but there is not yet sufficient information to identify an optimal regimen.
In some instances interventions appear ineffective: for example, the evidence suggests that directly observed therapy may be generally ineffective for improving treatment completion, adherence or clinical outcomes.
In other cases, interventions may have variable effects across outcomes. As an example, strategies providing information or education as single interventions appear ineffective to improve medicines adherence or clinical outcomes, but may be effective to improve knowledge; an important outcome for promoting consumers' informed medicines choices.
Despite a doubling in the number of reviews included in this updated overview, uncertainty still exists about the effectiveness of many interventions, and the evidence on what works remains sparse for several populations, including children and young people, carers, and people with multimorbidity.
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: This overview presents evidence from 75 reviews that have synthesised trials and other studies evaluating the effects of interventions to improve consumers' medicines use.
Systematically assembling the evidence across reviews allows identification of effective or promising interventions to improve consumers’ medicines use, as well as those for which the evidence indicates ineffectiveness or uncertainty.
Decision makers faced with implementing interventions to improve consumers' medicines use can use this overview to inform decisions about which interventions may be most promising to improve particular outcomes. The intervention taxonomy may also assist people to consider the strategies available in relation to specific purposes, for example, gaining skills or being involved in decision making. Researchers and funders can use this overview to identify where more research is needed and assess its priority. The limitations of the available literature due to the lack of evidence for important outcomes and important populations, such as people with multimorbidity, should also be considered in practice and policy decisions.
CONTEXTE: Les stratégies de mise en œuvre efficaces sont nécessaires pour optimiser les progrès dans les domaines du diagnostic du cancer, le traitement, la survie, et de fin de vie de qualité. Nous avons effectué une revue des revues systématiques de mieux comprendre le fondement probatoire de stratégies de mise en œuvre dans la lutte contre le cancer.
MÉTHODES: trois bases de données, nous avons effectué une recherche et identifiés de langue anglaise revues systématiques publiées entre 2005 et 2010 que le consommateur ciblé, professionnel, organisationnel, les interventions réglementaires ou financières, testé exclusivement ou partiellement dans un contexte cancer (foyer primaire); générique ou non spécifiques du cancer avis ont aussi été considérés. Les données ont été extraites, évalués et analysés par les membres de l'équipe de recherche, et des idées pour faire avancer la recherche sur le terrain ont été proposées.
RÉSULTATS: Trente-quatre revues systématiques fournissant 41 résumés de la preuve sur 19 interventions uniques comprenait la base de données probantes. Évaluations de la qualité Amstar variait entre 2 et 10. Les membres des équipes nominale plupart des interventions aussi prometteur et a besoin de recherches supplémentaires, et 64 idées de recherche ont été identifiés.
CONCLUSIONS: Bien que de nombreuses interventions prometteuses d'efficacité dans le contexte de la lutte anticancéreuse, quelques critiques ont pu conclure définitivement en faveur ou contre une intervention spécifique. Nous discutons de la complexité de la recherche mise en œuvre et offrir des suggestions pour faire avancer la science dans ce domaine.
Il ya maintenant une pléthore de différentes stratégies d'amélioration de la qualité (SAQ) pour l'optimisation des soins de santé, certains clinicien / patient conduit, d'autres gestionnaire / décideur entraîné. Lequel de ces restes sont les plus efficaces claire malgré les préoccupations exprimées sur le potentiel de préjudice pour le patient SDQ-connexe et le gaspillage des ressources. L'objectif de cette étude était d'examiner la littérature publiée évaluant l'efficacité relative des différents QIS. Les sources de données comprenant des requêtes PubMed cliniques, Cochrane Library et sa pratique efficace et Organisation des Soins de base de données, et HealthStar ont été perquisitionnés pour des études de QIS entre Janvier 1985 et Février 2008 au moyen des termes de recherche basés sur une classification a priori QIS suggéré par les experts. Les revues systématiques d'essais contrôlés ont été sélectionnés pour déterminer les tailles d'effet pour QIS spécifiques, qui ont été comparés comme un récit méta-analyse. Cliniciens / patient QIS entraînés ont été associés à des preuves plus solides de l'efficacité et les tailles d'effet plus importantes que manager / décideur QIS entraînés. Les stratégies les plus efficaces (> augmentation de 10% en valeur absolue en matière de soins appropriés ou une mesure équivalente) inclus cycles clinicien-dirigé de vérification et de rétroaction, clinique, systèmes aide à la décision, spécialité des programmes de sensibilisation, des programmes de gestion des maladies chroniques, la formation continue basés sur interactive en petits groupes le cas discussions, et le patient médiation rappels cliniciens. Pay-for-performance régimes destinés aux groupes de cliniciens et nouvelle conception des processus d'organisation étaient modérément efficaces. Autres manager / décideur QIS moteur, y compris des programmes continus d'amélioration de la qualité, des risques et des systèmes de gestion de la sécurité, des tableaux de bord et des rapports publics de performance, de l'accréditation externe, et les arrangements de gouvernance clinique n'ont pas été suffisamment évalués au regard de l'efficacité. QIS sont les défauts hétérogènes et méthodologique dans une grande partie de la validité limite la littérature évaluative et de généraliser les résultats. Basé sur les meilleures preuves disponibles actuellement, les cliniciens / patient QIS entraînés semble être plus efficace que gestionnaire / décideur entraîné QIS bien que ce dernier ont, dans de nombreux cas, a attiré l'insuffisance des évaluations robustes de déterminer avec précision leur efficacité comparative.
CONTEXTE: Les patients «non-adhésion au traitement médical reste un problème persistant. Beaucoup d'interventions visant à améliorer l'adhésion du patient sont infructueuses et les fondations théoriques solides font défaut. Innovations dans la théorie et la pratique sont absolument nécessaires. Une façon nouvelle et prometteuse pourrait être d'examiner les études existantes de l'adhésion aux interventions et identifier les théories sous-jacentes à des interventions efficaces. C'est le but de notre étude.
Méthodes: L'étude est un examen de 38 études systématiques de l'efficacité des interventions d'adhérence publiés entre 1990 et 2005. Des recherches électroniques de la littérature ont été menées dans Medline, Psychinfo, Embase et Cochrane Library. Critères d'inclusion et d'exclusion explicites ont été appliquées. La portée de l'étude est l'adhésion du patient au traitement médical dans le secteur des soins de cure et.
RÉSULTATS: Des différences significatives dans l'efficacité des interventions d'adhérence ont été trouvés dans 23 des 38 examens systématiques. Des interventions efficaces ont été trouvés dans chacune des quatre approches théoriques aux interventions d'adhérence: les interventions techniques, comportementales, éducatives et multi-facettes ou complexes. Solutions techniques, telles que la simplification du régime, étaient souvent jugés efficaces, bien que cela ne compte pas pour chaque schéma thérapeutique.Dans l'ensemble, nos résultats montrent que, d'une part, il ya des interventions de l'adhésion effective sans une explication théorique explicite des mécanismes de fonctionnement, par exemple des solutions techniques. Deuxièmement, il ya des interventions de l'adhésion effective, qui découlent clairement des théories du comportement, par exemple les incitations et les rappels. Troisièmement, il existe d'autres modèles théoriques qui semblent plausibles pour expliquer le non-respect, mais pas très efficace pour améliorer le comportement d'adhérence. Quatrièmement, les composantes efficaces au sein des théories prometteuses n'ont pas pu être identifiés en raison de la complexité de nombreuses interventions d'adhérence et le manque d'études qui comparent explicitement composantes théoriques.
Conclusion: Il ya une rareté des études comparatives contrastées explicitement modèles théoriques ou de leurs composants. Le poids relatif de ces théories et les composants efficaces dans les interventions visant à améliorer l'adhésion, doivent être évalués dans des études futures.
A key function of health systems is implementing interventions to improve health, but coverage of essential health interventions remains low in low-income countries. Implementing interventions can be challenging, particularly if it entails complex changes in clinical routines; in collaborative patterns among different healthcare providers and disciplines; in the behaviour of providers, patients or other stakeholders; or in the organisation of care. Decision-makers may use a range of strategies to implement health interventions, and these choices should be based on evidence of the strategies' effectiveness.
OBJECTIVES:
To provide an overview of the available evidence from up-to-date systematic reviews about the effects of implementation strategies for health systems in low-income countries. Secondary objectives include identifying needs and priorities for future evaluations and systematic reviews on alternative implementation strategies and informing refinements of the framework for implementation strategies presented in the overview.
METHODS:
We searched Health Systems Evidence in November 2010 and PDQ-Evidence up to December 2016 for systematic reviews. We did not apply any date, language or publication status limitations in the searches. We included well-conducted systematic reviews of studies that assessed the effects of implementation strategies on professional practice and patient outcomes and that were published after April 2005. We excluded reviews with limitations important enough to compromise the reliability of the review findings. Two overview authors independently screened reviews, extracted data and assessed the certainty of evidence using GRADE. We prepared SUPPORT Summaries for eligible reviews, including key messages, 'Summary of findings' tables (using GRADE to assess the certainty of the evidence) and assessments of the relevance of findings to low-income countries.
MAIN RESULTS:
We identified 7272 systematic reviews and included 39 of them in this overview. An additional four reviews provided supplementary information. Of the 39 reviews, 32 had only minor limitations and 7 had important methodological limitations. Most studies in the reviews were from high-income countries. There were no studies from low-income countries in eight reviews.Implementation strategies addressed in the reviews were grouped into four categories – strategies targeting:1. healthcare organisations (e.g. strategies to change organisational culture; 1 review);2. healthcare workers by type of intervention (e.g. printed educational materials; 14 reviews);3. healthcare workers to address a specific problem (e.g. unnecessary antibiotic prescription; 9 reviews);4. healthcare recipients (e.g. medication adherence; 15 reviews).Overall, we found the following interventions to have desirable effects on at least one outcome with moderate- or high-certainty evidence and no moderate- or high-certainty evidence of undesirable effects.1.Strategies targeted at healthcare workers: educational meetings, nutrition training of health workers, educational outreach, practice facilitation, local opinion leaders, audit and feedback, and tailored interventions.2.Strategies targeted at healthcare workers for specific types of problems: training healthcare workers to be more patient-centred in clinical consultations, use of birth kits, strategies such as clinician education and patient education to reduce antibiotic prescribing in ambulatory care settings, and in-service neonatal emergency care training.3. Strategies targeted at healthcare recipients: mass media interventions to increase uptake of HIV testing; intensive self-management and adherence, intensive disease management programmes to improve health literacy; behavioural interventions and mobile phone text messages for adherence to antiretroviral therapy; a one time incentive to start or continue tuberculosis prophylaxis; default reminders for patients being treated for active tuberculosis; use of sectioned polythene bags for adherence to malaria medication; community-based health education, and reminders and recall strategies to increase vaccination uptake; interventions to increase uptake of cervical screening (invitations, education, counselling, access to health promotion nurse and intensive recruitment); health insurance information and application support.
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS:
Reliable systematic reviews have evaluated a wide range of strategies for implementing evidence-based interventions in low-income countries. Most of the available evidence is focused on strategies targeted at healthcare workers and healthcare recipients and relates to process-based outcomes. Evidence of the effects of strategies targeting healthcare organisations is scarce.
