Taking the next steps

As part of the VIGOUR project, 15 regions across seven European countries have begun to prepare the next step on their journey towards integrated care. Every care authority in Europe is faced with different conditions when it comes to integrated care model development, be it in economic, technological, organisational, political or socio-cultural regard. Against this background, VIGOUR is going to implement an ambitious programme of context-sensitive support which helps care authorities developing the capacities and capabilities to implement good practices in integrated care.

The European regions that have joined forces in the VIGOUR consortium are not starting from scratch. Each region can build on previous efforts to better align care delivery to people with chronic or other conditions across the care chain, albeit in different ways and to different degrees. By passing through the first phase of a multi-staged process, each region is now preparing for the piloting of further care integration steps. All in all, this process comprises three phases (read more about the main phases here):

• The VIGOUR base line phase: The first phase of the project life cycle focuses on carefully defining which integrated care practices are to be scaled up in the participating care authorities. Experiences clearly show that adopting a “one-size-fits-all” model of integrated care across the participating care authorities would very likely fail to deliver the desired outcomes. VIGOUR therefore supports incremental, controlled migration from existing work practices and technologies.
• The VIGOUR preparation phase: The next project phase sets out from an initial implementation plan, with its consolidated view on what is to be scaled up in each of the VIGOUR care authorities, and refines plans as to how each care authority can best put their particular integration ambitions into practice. These will be guided by targeted support measures relying on a contextualised consolidation of the evidence base currently available from existing sources. Beyond this, a crucial part of this support process represents mutual learning and knowledge exchange between involved regions.
• The VIGOUR scaling-up phase: Based on the consolidated scaling-up plans developed by the participating care authorities in the previous stage, local scaling-up pilots will be implemented. The pilots will be operated under day-to-day conditions by the VIGOUR care authorities throughout the remaining project duration.

With the help of the experiences gained from the VIGOUR regions, evidence-based guidance material will be made publicly available at a later stage. Check also our alerts on scaling-up guidance webinars to be held towards the end of the project which will be advertised via our website.