Tiina Pesonen, Juhani Sulander, Hanna Tiirinki, Pekka Räsänen, Merja Sahlström, Ilmo Keskimäki and Timo Sinervo
Integrated care is the leading approach to developing health and social care services in Finland. After the national health and social care reform, the importance of assessing…
Abstract
Purpose
Integrated care is the leading approach to developing health and social care services in Finland. After the national health and social care reform, the importance of assessing integration has been emphasized. The aim of this study was to pilot the SCIROCCO tool, which assesses integration maturity, in Finland. The SCIROCCO tool was translated and adapted to the Finnish health and social care context. The feasibility and utility of this tool for assessing the maturity for integration across health and social care in Finland were evaluated using empirical pilot data collected among employees of selected well-being service counties. The study also provided baseline information on the maturity of integration after the national health and social care reform.
Design/methodology/approach
Employees (n = 111) of different personnel groups in health and social care services in four well-being service counties assessed the maturity of integration using a web-based survey. A pilot study design was used.
Findings
The SCIROCCO tool was found to be useful for assessing the maturity of integration in health and social care within the well-being service counties. However, the tool requires further development to be fully adapted to the Finnish health and social care system and to assess integration across sectors. The results emphasize the need to understand the perspectives of different personnel groups on integration and to consider them in the development work.
Originality/value
This was the first study conducted in Finland that provided valuable insights into the assessment of integration across the health and social care sectors. This study establishes the foundation for future research and development in the field of integration assessment.
Details
Keywords
Samuli Tikkanen, Pekka Räsänen, Timo Sinervo, Ilmo Keskimäki, Merja Sahlström, Tiina Pesonen and Hanna Tiirinki
Health care integration is crucial in improving service equality and patient outcomes. However, measuring integration between the health and social care sectors remains…
Abstract
Purpose
Health care integration is crucial in improving service equality and patient outcomes. However, measuring integration between the health and social care sectors remains challenging. This article aims to review existing systematic models to identify alternative health and social care integration measurement tools. The review focuses on models that involve systematic planning and long-term cooperation across different organizational sectors.
Design/methodology/approach
The study examines various dimensions and elements of integration, including process, outcome and structural measures. It compares different tools used to measure social and health care integration, such as the Rainbow model, Balanced Scorecard (BSC) Scorecard, PRISMA, SCIROCCO, integRATE, health-data simulation (HSIM) and the model developed by Åhgren and Axelsson. The analysis includes both empirical studies and theoretical frameworks.
Findings
The findings highlight the importance of standardized measurement methods to assess the impact of integration initiatives on patient outcomes, healthcare costs and the quality of care.
Originality/value
The review contributes to the ongoing discourse on social and health care integration, particularly in the Nordic context. The results can inform social and healthcare providers, policymakers and researchers in evaluating and improving integration initiatives.
Details
Keywords
Henri Pesonen, Tiina Itkonen, Mari Saha and Anders Nordahl-Hansen
Media play a significant role in the process of raising public awareness about autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite an increase in ASD media coverage, there is scarcity of…
Abstract
Purpose
Media play a significant role in the process of raising public awareness about autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite an increase in ASD media coverage, there is scarcity of research that examines how the actual frame is constructed and how the news stories are narrated. This study aims to examine the extent to which Finnish print media papers extend medical and societal narration of ASD to other issue domains and the extent to which newspaper stories use a positive, negative or neutral narrative.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyzed 210 full newspaper reports from the largest daily appearing newspaper by circulation in Finland from 1990 to 2016. The authors used the newspaper’s electronic database to conduct a systematic papers search. The authors then used coding scheme about news story framing, which was followed by a detailed content analysis of the papers.
Findings
Approximately two-thirds of the papers consisted of a straightforward informational or clinical lens to educate the public (n = 110). This is in line with international studies. However, the authors’ analysis revealed four additional themes of medical and societal ASD reporting.
Social implications
The study increases understanding about how the media can shape the public perception of ASD, which in turn might influence how autistic individuals are accepted in the society, as well as how they feel that they belong.
Originality/value
While ASD itself is at the center of neutral news reporting, this study’s results imply how to construct ASD from new paradigms. Linking ASD to a culture, and thus extending it to the more commonly accepted notion of deafness as a culture, might shape the public’s perceptions about ASD.
Details
Keywords
Johanna Moisander and Sinikka Pesonen
This paper discusses the representation of “green consumerism” in the prevalent institutionalised discourses of green consumerism, and in the self‐narratives of people who…
Abstract
This paper discusses the representation of “green consumerism” in the prevalent institutionalised discourses of green consumerism, and in the self‐narratives of people who identify themselves as ecologically oriented citizens, focusing on the construction of the self and the other in these texts. The aim is to investigate the ways in which “radical” ecologically oriented citizens, who are largely “marginalised” and positioned as the other in the dominant discourses of green consumerism, engage in resistance towards western, materialistic consumption culture. Drawing from the Foucauldian ideas of political struggle as the “politics of the self”, and personal ethics and moral agency as a mode of self‐formation, this paper analyses the ways in which these “green consumers” reject their received subjectivity as consumers. The focus is on the practices of self, and on the ways in which they invent and promote new forms of subjectivity that are more in line with their environmentalist ideology.