Indicators and Measurement Tools for Health Systems Integration: A Knowledge Synthesis

Background: Despite far reaching support for integrated care, conceptualizing and measuring integrated care remains challenging. This knowledge synthesis aimed to identify indicator domains and tools to measure progress towards integrated care. 

Methods: We used an established framework and a Delphi survey with integration experts to identify relevant measurement domains. For each domain, we searched and reviewed the literature for relevant tools. 

Findings: From 7,133 abstracts, we retrieved 114 unique tools. We found many quality tools to measure care coordination, patient engagement and team effectiveness/performance. In contrast, there were few tools in the domains of performance measurement and information systems, alignment of organizational goals and resource allocation. The search yielded 12 tools that measure overall integration or three or more indicator domains. 

Discussion: Our findings highlight a continued gap in tools to measure foundational components that support integrated care. In the absence of such targeted tools, “overall integration” tools may be useful for a broad assessment of the overall state of a system. 

Conclusions: Continued progress towards integrated care depends on our ability to evaluate the success of strategies across different levels and context. This study has identified 114 tools that measure integrated care across 16 domains, supporting efforts towards a unified measurement framework.