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Case study research and causal inference
Case study methodology is widely used in health research, but has had a marginal role in evaluative studies, given it is often assumed that case studies offer little for making causal inferences. We undertook a narrative review of examples of case study research from public health and health services evaluations, with a focus on interventions addressing health inequalities. We identified five types of contribution these case studies made to evidence for causal relationships. These contributions relate to: (1) evidence about system actors’ own theories of causality; (2) demonstrative examples of causal relationships; (3) evidence about causal mechanisms; (4) evidence about the conditions under which causal mechanisms operate; and (5) inference about causality in complex systems. Case studies can and do contribute to understanding causal relationships. More transparency in the reporting of case studies would enhance their discoverability, and aid the development of a robust and pluralistic evidence base for public health and health services interventions. To strengthen the contribution that case studies make to that evidence base, researchers could: draw on wider methods from the political and social sciences, in particular on methods for robust analysis; carefully consider what population their case is a case ‘of’; and explicate the rationale used for making causal inferences.
Why doesn’t integrated care work? Using Strong Structuration Theory to explain the limitations of an English case
Integrated care is an aim and a method for organising health and care services, particularly for older people and those with chronic conditions. Policy expects that integrated care programmes will provide person-centred coordinated care which will improve patient or client experience, enable population health, prevent hospital admissions and thereby reduce costs. However, empirical evaluations of integrated care interventions have shown disappointing results. We analysed an in-depth case study using Strong Structuration Theory to ask: how and why have efforts to integrate health and social care failed to produce desired outcomes? In our case, integrated case management and the creation of cost-saving plans were dominant practices. People working in health and social care recursively produced a structure of integrated care: a recognised set of resources created by collective activities. Integrated care, intended to help patients manage their long-term conditions and avoid hospital admission, was only a small part of the complex network that sustained patients at home. The structures of integrated care were unable to compensate for changes in patients’ health. The result was that patients’ experiences remained largely unaffected and hospital admissions were not easily avoided.
Rethinking Integrated Care: A Systematic Hermeneutic Review of the Literature on Integrated Care Strategies and Concepts
Policy Points Integrated care is best understood as an emergent set of practices intrinsically shaped by contextual factors, and not as a single intervention to achieve predetermined outcomes. Policies to integrate care that facilitate person-centered, relationship-based care can potentially contribute to (but not determine) improved patient experiences. There can be an association between improved patient experiences and system benefits, but these outcomes of integrated care are of different orders and do not necessarily align. Policymakers should critically evaluate integrated care programs to identify and manage conflicts and tensions between a program's aims and the context in which it is being introduced. Context: Integrated care is a broad concept, used to describe a connected set of clinical, organizational, and policy changes aimed at improving service efficiency, patient experience, and outcomes. Despite examples of successful integrated care systems, evidence for consistent and reproducible benefits remains elusive. We sought to inform policy and practice by conducting a systematic hermeneutic review of literature covering integrated care strategies and concepts. Methods: We used an emergent search strategy to identify 71 sources that considered what integrated care means and/or tested models of integrated care. Our analysis entailed (1) comparison of strategies and concepts of integrated care, (2) tracing common story lines across multiple sources, (3) developing a taxonomy of literature, and (4) generating a novel interpretation of the heterogeneous strategies and concepts of integrated care. Findings: We identified four perspectives on integrated care: patients’ perspectives, organizational strategies and policies, conceptual models, and theoretical and critical analysis. We subdivided the strategies into four framings of how integrated care manifests and is understood to effect change. Common across empirical and conceptual work was a concern with unity in the face of fragmentation as well as the development and application of similar methods to achieve this unity. However, integrated care programs did not necessarily lead to the changes intended in experiences and outcomes. We attribute this gap between expectations and results, in part, to significant misalignment between the aspiration for unity underpinning conceptual models on the one hand and the multiplicity of practical application of strategies to integrate care on the other. Conclusions: Those looking for universal answers to narrow questions about whether integrated care “works” are likely to remain disappointed. Models of integrated care need to be valued for their heuristic rather than predictive powers, and integration understood as emerging from particular as well as common contexts.
Care organising technologies and the post-phenomenology of care: An ethnographic case study
Care organising technologies are software applications that are intended primarily for informal carers, to help organise, document and coordinate caring work. These may be purchased privately or provided as part of state support. Take-up to date remains low. Based on empirical case studies of three such technologies and drawing on post-phenomenology and political science, we examined people's experience of caring when caring technologies find a way into their lives. Our findings show how care organising technologies have evolved in a political context that assumes informal support will supplement and sometimes substitute for state support. Technologies were largely designed to foreground the technical and organisational aspects of care such as planning meals, coordinating medication, and allocating and monitoring tasks among carers. For carers, the result was often a flattening of the landscape of care such that the socio-emotional work of caring was rendered invisible and relations between cared-for and caregiver were configured in narrow transactional terms. For a small number of carers, the focus on tasks was out of tune with their (often emotionally charged) experiences of care and led to active rejection of the technology. However, we also found examples of caregivers and the individuals they cared for using technologies adaptively to facilitate and embed existing care relationships. In these examples, the material/technical, socio-emotional and bodily aspects of caring were interwoven with the situated context of close, unique and evolving relationships. We conclude that the design and development of caring technologies would benefit by being informed by a broader orientation of caring as a relational practice.
Understanding decision making about major surgery: protocol for a qualitative study of shared decision making by high-risk patients and their clinical teams
INTRODUCTION: Surgical treatments are being offered to more patients than ever before, and increasingly to high-risk patients (typically multimorbid and over 75). Shared decision making is seen as essential practice. However, little is currently known about what 'good' shared decision making involves nor how it applies in the context of surgery for high-risk patients. This new study aims to identify how high-risk patients, their families and clinical teams negotiate decision making for major surgery. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Focusing on major joint replacement, colorectal and cardiac surgery, we use qualitative methods to explore how patients, their families and clinicians negotiate decision making (including interactional, communicative and informational aspects and the extent to which these are perceived as shared) and reflect back on the decisions they made. Phase 1 involves video recording 15 decision making encounters about major surgery between patients, their carers/families and clinicians; followed by up to 90 interviews (with the same patient, carer and clinician participants) immediately after a decision has been made and again 3-6 months later. Phase 2 involves focus groups with a wider group of (up to 90) patients and (up to 30) clinicians to test out emerging findings and inform development of shared decision making scenarios (3-5 summary descriptions of how decisions are made). ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study forms the first part in a 6-year programme of research, Optimising Shared decision-makIng for high-RIsk major Surgery (OSIRIS). Ethical challenges around involving patients at a challenging time in their lives will be overseen by the programme steering committee, which includes strong patient representation and a lay chair. In addition to academic outputs, we will produce a typology of decision making scenarios for major surgery to feed back to patients, professionals and service providers and inform subsequent work in the OSIRIS programme.
'They shouldn't be coming to the ED, should they?' A qualitative study of why patients with palliative care needs present to the emergency department
INTRODUCTION: Across the developed world, there are concerns about 'inappropriate' use of the emergency department (ED). Patients with palliative care needs frequently attend the ED. Previous studies define the 'reason' for presentation as the 'presenting symptom', which ignores the perspectives of service users. This paper addresses an acknowledged gap in the literature, which fails to examine the decision-making process that brings patients to the ED. METHODS: In-depth narrative interviews were conducted with 7 patients (known to a specialist palliative care service and presenting to the ED during a 10-week period) and 2 informal caregivers. Analysis drew on 'Burden of Treatment Theory' to examine the meaning attributed by participants to their experience of serious acute illness, their capacity for action and the work required to access emergency care. RESULTS: 5 themes were identified about how and why emergency services were accessed: capacity for action, making sense of local services, making decisions to access emergency services, experience of emergency care and coping with change. All narratives captured concerns surrounding the complexity of services. Participants struggled to piece together the jigsaw of services, and were subsequently more likely to attend the ED. Differences between the ways that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer accessed the ED were prominent. CONCLUSIONS: Further work is needed to understand and respond to decisions leading patients with palliative care needs to the ED, particularly in the context of locally fragmented services, poor signposting and confusion about available healthcare. The perspectives of service users are essential in shaping emergency care.
Moral entrepreneurship, the power-knowledge nexus, and the Cochrane “crisis”
Background: In 2018, a so-called crisis developed in the international network of systematic reviewers known as Cochrane. It was widely depicted in terms of two competing narratives—“bad behaviour” by one member of Cochrane's Governing Board and scientific and moral decline within Cochrane. Objective: Our goal was to distil insights on the structural issues underpinning the crisis, without taking a definitive position on the accuracy of either narrative. Approach and dataset: In this paper, we draw on (among other theories) Becker's notion of moral entrepreneurship and Foucault's conceptualisation of power to analyse the claims and counterclaims made by different parties. Our dataset consisted of publicly available materials (blogs, journal articles, newspaper articles) to end 2018, notably those relating to the expulsion of one Governing Board member. Main findings: Both narratives include strong moral claims about the science of systematic review and the governance of scientific organizations. The expelled individual and his supporters defined good systematic reviews in terms of a particular kind of methodological rigour and elimination of bias, and good governance largely in terms of measures to achieve independence from industry influence. Most of Cochrane's Governing Board and their sympathizers evaluated systematic reviews according to a broader range of criteria, incorporating factors such as attention to relationships among reviewers and reflexivity and dialogue around scientific and other judgements. They viewed governance partly in terms of accountability to an external advisory group. Power-knowledge alignments in Cochrane have emerged from, and contributed to, a particular system of meaning which is now undergoing evolution and challenge. Conclusion: Polarizing Cochrane's “crisis” into two narratives, only one of which is true, is less fruitful than viewing it in terms of a duality consisting of tensions between the two positions, each of which has some validity. Having framed the conflict as primarily philosophical and political rather than methodological and procedural, we suggest how Cochrane and its supporters and critics might harness their tensions productively.
Policy
This chapter introduces linguistic ethnographic approaches to policy research. It provides a historical overview of how policy has been conceptualised in research, arguing for the value of an interpretive approach. It describes research from linguistic and ethnographic perspectives in policy studies, including policy ethnography and research which sees policy as discourse. It reviews work in linguistic ethnography which attends to policy, and considers other relevant methodological frameworks which align with this, particularly interpretive policy analysis. Two case studies are used to show how linguistic ethnography can be drawn on in policy research: a study of the role of think tanks in shaping health policy, and a study of the role of local government in shaping policy on the ‘Big Society’. Methodological principles are identified, including the need for close analysis to dispersed micro-level policy practices, the value of ‘studying up’ and the crucial importance of focussing on political language as social practice. Implications for practice and future directions for work in this area are outlined, including consideration of the definition of data in linguistic ethnography given the dispersed and messy nature of policy development.
Liminality in practice: A case study in life sciences research
Contemporary health challenges (e.g., diabetes, climate change, antimicrobial resistance) are underpinned by complex interrelationships between behavioural, cultural, social, environmental and biological processes. Current experimental systems are only partially relevant to the problems they investigate, but aspirations to embed interdisciplinary working and community engagement into life scientists’ work in response to this partiality have proven difficult in practice. This paper explores one UK university-based life sciences research initiative as it seeks to develop modes of working which respond to this complexity. Drawing on ‘liminal hotspots’ as a sensitising concept, we explore how participating academics articulate complex problems, knowledge-making, interdisciplinary working and community engagement. Our analysis shows they become recurrently ‘trapped’ (institutionally and epistemologically) between fixed/universalised cosmologies of biology/disease, and more contemporary cosmologies in which biology and disease are conceptualised as situated and evolving. Adopting approaches to community organising based on ‘process pragmatism’, we propose ways in which life scientists might radically reorganise their practice and move beyond current limiting enactments of interdisciplinary and community engaged working. In doing so, we claim that the relevance and ‘humanness’ of life science research will be increased.
Standardisation and its Consequences in Health Care: A Case Study of PRINCE2 Project Management Training
“New models of care”, “care home vanguards” and “innovation test beds”. These are just a few of the initiatives being pursued in England’s National Health Service (NHS). They reflect wider changes in the organisation of the public sector that encourage short-term, focused projects that frequently de-couple the change process from the wider context. The dominant research interest in such projects has been on questions of implementation and outcome (e.g. how are project aims achieved). Far less attention has been given to questions of process and the kind of work that gets done. In this chapter we adopt an interpretive approach to critically examine the significance of project management for public sector health care, drawing on a case study of PRojects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE2TM) training to examine how the idea of “project management” is constructed, the discourses and categories in play, and the implications for public sector health care. Our findings focus on three areas. Firstly, the principles underpinning PRINCE2TM draw on standardised and linear views of the world with processes leading directly to outputs. This way of conceptualising change presents the work of project management as neat and tidy and distances those involved from the human elements of managing. Secondly, the models, procedures, and techniques underpinning PRINCE2TM are concerned with efficient and cost-effective delivery of projects. This focus on technical responsibility encourages users to focus on the means rather than the end, to substitute moral and ethical concerns with technical procedures and decontextualises projects from the very communities they are (in theory) intended to serve. Finally, language plays a key role in promoting and sustaining ideas of a “market society”. Repeated use of terms such as “business”, “interests”, and “assurance mechanisms” hold potential to translate concerns over sickness or care into market-oriented language that is focused on business cycles and oriented to creating “value”. This jars with values of citizenship or public duty often associated with public welfare. We conclude by reflecting on the consequences of this project management work for health care and other public sector work, paying particular attention to the potential for “moral blindness”.
Correction: Improving care at scale: Process evaluation of a multi-component quality improvement intervention to reduce mortality after emergency abdominal surgery (EPOCH trial). [Implement Sci. (2018), 13 (142)] DOI: 10.1186/s13012-018-0823-9
Following the publication of this article [1], the authors reported a number of errors which are given below.
Improving care at scale: Process evaluation of a multi-component quality improvement intervention to reduce mortality after emergency abdominal surgery (EPOCH trial)
Background: Improving the quality and safety of perioperative care is a global priority. The Enhanced Peri-Operative Care for High-risk patients (EPOCH) trial was a stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial of a quality improvement (QI) programme to improve 90-day survival for patients undergoing emergency abdominal surgery in 93 hospitals in the UK National Health Service. Methods: The aim of this process evaluation is to describe how the EPOCH intervention was planned, delivered and received, at both cluster and local hospital levels. The QI programme comprised of two interventions: a care pathway and a QI intervention to aid pathway implementation, focussed on stakeholder engagement, QI teamwork, data analysis and feedback and applying the model for improvement. Face-to-face training and online resources were provided to support senior clinicians in each hospital (QI leads) to lead improvement. For this evaluation, we collated programme activity data, administered an exit questionnaire to QI leads and collected ethnographic data in six hospitals. Qualitative data were analysed with thematic or comparative analysis; quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics. Results: The EPOCH trial did not demonstrate any improvement in survival or length of hospital stay. Whilst the QI programme was delivered as planned at the cluster level, self-assessed intervention fidelity at the hospital level was variable. Seventy-seven of 93 hospitals responded to the exit questionnaire (60 from a single QI lead response on behalf of the team); 33 respondents described following the QI intervention closely (35%) and there were only 11 of 37 care pathway processes that >50% of respondents reported attempting to improve. Analysis of qualitative data suggests QI leads were often attempting to deliver the intervention in challenging contexts: the social aspects of change such as engaging colleagues were identified as important but often difficult and clinicians frequently attempted to lead change with limited time or organisational resources. Conclusions: Significant organisational challenges faced by QI leads shaped their choice of pathway components to focus on and implementation approaches taken. Adaptation causing loss of intervention fidelity was therefore due to rational choices made by those implementing change within constrained contexts. Future large-scale QI programmes will need to focus on dedicating local time and resources to improvement as well as on training to develop QI capabilities. EPOCH trial registration: ISRCTN80682973 https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN80682973Registered 27 February 2014 and Lancet protocol 13PRT/7655.
Experiences with online consultation systems in primary care: Case study of one early adopter site
Background There is a strong policy drive towards implementing alternatives to face-to-face consultations in general practice to improve access, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. These alternatives embrace novel technologies that are assumed to offer potential to improve care. Aim To explore the introduction of one online consultation system (Tele-Doc) and how it shapes working practices. Design and setting Mixed methods case study in an inner-city general practice. Method The study was conducted through interviews with IT developers, clinicians, and administrative staff, and scrutiny of documents, websites, and demonstrator versions of Tele-Doc, followed by thematic analysis and discourse analysis. Results Three interrelated themes were identified: online consultation systems as innovation, managing the 'messiness' of general practice consultations, and redistribution of the work of general practice. These themes raise timely questions about what it means to consult in contemporary general practice. Uptake of Tele-Doc by patients was low. Much of the work of the consultation was redistributed to patients and administrators, sometimes causing misunderstandings. The 'messiness' of consultations was hard to eliminate. In-house training focused on the technical application rather than associated transformations to practice work that were not anticipated. GPs welcomed varied modes of consulting, but the aspiration of improved efficiency was not realised in practice. Conclusion Tele-Doc offers a new kind of consultation that is still being worked out in practice. It may offer convenience for patients with discrete, single problems, and a welcome variation to GPs' workload. Tele-Doc's potential for addressing more complex problems and achieving efficiency is less clear, and its adoption may involve unforeseeable consequences.
Understanding heart failure; explaining telehealth - A hermeneutic systematic review
Background: Enthusiasts for telehealth extol its potential for supporting heart failure management. But randomised trials have been slow to recruit and produced conflicting findings; real-world roll-out has been slow. We sought to inform policy by making sense of a complex literature on heart failure and its remote management. Methods: Through database searching and citation tracking, we identified 7 systematic reviews of systematic reviews, 32 systematic reviews (including 17 meta-analyses and 8 qualitative reviews); six mega-trials and over 60 additional relevant empirical studies and commentaries. We synthesised these using Boell's hermeneutic methodology for systematic review, which emphasises the quest for understanding. Results: Heart failure is a complex and serious condition with frequent co-morbidity and diverse manifestations including severe tiredness. Patients are often frightened, bewildered, socially isolated and variably able to selfmanage. Remote monitoring technologies are many and varied; they create new forms of knowledge and new possibilities for care but require fundamental changes to clinical roles and service models and place substantial burdens on patients, carers and staff. The policy innovation of remote biomarker monitoring enabling timely adjustment of medication, mediated by "activated" patients, is based on a modernist vision of efficient, rational, technology-mediated and guideline-driven ("cold") care. It contrasts with relationship-based ("warm") care valued by some clinicians and by patients who are older, sicker and less technically savvy. Limited uptake of telehealth can be analysed in terms of key tensions: between tidy, "textbook" heart failure and the reality of multiple comorbidities; between basic and intensive telehealth; between activated, well-supported patients and vulnerable, unsupported ones; between "cold" and "warm" telehealth; and between fixed and agile care programmes. Conclusion: The limited adoption of telehealth for heart failure has complex clinical, professional and institutional causes, which are unlikely to be elucidated by adding more randomised trials of technology-on versus technologyoff to an already-crowded literature. An alternative approach is proposed, based on naturalistic study designs, application of social and organisational theory, and co-design of new service models based on socio-technical principles. Conventional systematic reviews (whose goal is synthesising data) can be usefully supplemented by hermeneutic reviews (whose goal is deepening understanding).
Achieving Research Impact Through Co-creation in Community-Based Health Services: Literature Review and Case Study
Policy Points: Co-creation - collaborative knowledge generation by academics working alongside other stakeholders - is an increasingly popular approach to aligning research and service development. It has potential for "moving beyond the ivory towers" to deliver significant societal impact via dynamic, locally adaptive community-academic partnerships. Principles of successful co-creation include a systems perspective, a creative approach to research focused on improving human experience, and careful attention to governance and process. If these principles are not followed, co-creation efforts may fail. Context Co-creation - collaborative knowledge generation by academics working alongside other stakeholders - reflects a "Mode 2" relationship (knowledge production rather than knowledge translation) between universities and society. Co-creation is widely believed to increase research impact. Methods We undertook a narrative review of different models of co-creation relevant to community-based health services. We contrasted their diverse disciplinary roots and highlighted their common philosophical assumptions, principles of success, and explanations for failures. We applied these to an empirical case study of a community-based research-service partnership led by the Centre of Research Excellence in Quality and Safety in Integrated Primary-Secondary Care at the University of Queensland, Australia. Findings Co-creation emerged independently in several fields, including business studies ("value co-creation"), design science ("experience-based co-design"), computer science ("technology co-design"), and community development ("participatory research"). These diverse models share some common features, which were also evident in the case study. Key success principles included (1) a systems perspective (assuming emergence, local adaptation, and nonlinearity); (2) the framing of research as a creative enterprise with human experience at its core; and (3) an emphasis on process (the framing of the program, the nature of relationships, and governance and facilitation arrangements, especially the style of leadership and how conflict is managed). In both the literature review and the case study, co-creation "failures" could often be tracked back to abandoning (or never adopting) these principles. All co-creation models made strong claims for significant and sustainable societal impacts as a result of the adaptive and developmental research process; these were illustrated in the case study. Conclusions Co-creation models have high potential for societal impact but depend critically on key success principles. To capture the nonlinear chains of causation in the co-creation pathway, impact metrics must reflect the dynamic nature and complex interdependencies of health research systems and address processes as well as outcomes.