Abstract
Existing research suggests that care pathways can improve the quality, organization, and consistency of care. However, little is known about the current scope and implementation of care pathways across the world. In collaboration with the European Pathway Association, we designed and implemented a survey on the use of care pathways. The survey could not be representative of national experience with care pathways, given that they are most often developed locally, but rather aimed to provide insight into differences and commonalities. We collected 163 responses (25% response rate) from 39 countries across the world. The survey uncovered variability in the use of evidence-based guidelines, a continued reliance on giving patients information rather than investing in self-management training, suboptimal involvement of patients in the development of, and training on, care pathways, and reported challenges of evaluating the effectiveness of care pathways against a range of indicators. More work is needed to understand the care pathways that are in place, how they compare, and what would need to be done to make them mutually compatible.
Acknowledgements
We sincerely thank the members of the European Pathway Association for participating in the survey. This work was supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme EU Cross Border Care Collaboration (EUCBCC). Contract no: 242058. Sole responsibility lies with the authors and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. The funder played no role in the design of the study, the interpretation of the findings, the writing of the paper, or the decision to submit.