Abstract
Background: In 2022 The Integrated Care Agreement (IHA) was signed in the Netherlands by a wide range of representatives from the healthcare sector, the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) and the Ministry of Health. Jointly they committed to the important societal challenge of keeping good-quality healthcare affordable and accessible, now and in the future. Two of the most important pillars of the agreement are the transformation to ‘the right care in the right place’ and regional collaboration for integrated healthcare. In order to support regional care providers and policymakers with the transformation, The National Institute of Public Health (RIVM) developed a large open data information and visualization platform: Regional health at a glance (Regiobeeld.nl).
Approach: In order to prevent information-bias in regional collaborations and to optimally support data-driven integral care transformation, all regional information on health, context and healthcare on the platform is publicly available for all regions. Different regional levels of aggregation can be selected depending on the topic and network of collaboration and policy making and compared to other regions or the national level. Information is shown in maps, graphs and charts, as well as opensource data. When possible historical trends are shown and projections made into the future.
Results: The platform currently shows over 150 regional indicators of population health, social environment, healthcare utilization, social support and healthcare supply, on different regional levels like municipality, insurer’s region or area of emergency care. The information contains:
-Indicators for integrated care in the region e.g. utilization of home care and emergency care for elderly, and the relation primary care and organization of social care and social prescribing
-Oversight visualizations summarizing indicators across (healthcare) sectors.
-Overview and database of healthcare providers collaborations both within and across healthcare sectors
-Benchmarking and best practices
-Dashboard showing progress on integrated care goals for specific target groups like frail elderly and patients with mental disorders.
Implications: The platform has developed and extended rapidly over the past 3 years. Other agreements like the Prevention Agreement (GALA) have incorporated their regional indicators on the platform. Future steps are:
-Further broadening of integrated indicators e.g. from the social support and municipality domain
-Further deepening of indicators for example by showing lower regional level like neighborhoods
-Improving projections by incorporating epidemiological trends and foresights
-Improving oversight of indicators across healthcare sectors and benchmarking for example with machine learning techniques
-Adding best practices and reform examples with transferable lesson to other regions.