WONCA EUROPE ANNIVERSARY FUND 2015
In the preparation of the 2015 anniversary, Wonca Europe sent out an INVITATION to bid for the ‘Anniversary Fund’ of 100 000 USD. The invitation was send to Wonca Europe Member Organizations, Network Organizations of Wonca Europe, and Wonca Europe Collaborative Organizations and was also placed at the Wonca Europe website. The letter contained a few directives: (1) ‘to deliver a project with lasting benefit to Family Medicine in Europe’; (2) ‘must demonstrate joint working between at least three European partners from different countries’; (3) ‘applications with full details of partnerships, co-funding (if appropriate), timescales and deliverables must be received by the Secretariat of Wonca Europe by 31 January 2012.’
ASSESSMENT TOOL
Key elements in the assessment were: justification of the project; well defined objectives; appropriateness of the method/plan; feasible timescale; deliverables well defined; quality of the partnerships; co-funding (if appropriate); sustainability of the product/result; and lasting benefit to Family Medicine in Europe. All items were scored on a scale one to five (one meaning low/absent and five meaning high/very well). This resulted in a sum score per project with the score of the item ‘Lasting benefit’ counting double.
ASSESSMENT PROCEDURE
Members of the Executive Board (EB) with a personal interest (as applicant or executive member of the organization who applied) did not assess that application. A total score per project was created based on the score of all assessors divided by the number of assessors.
At the EB meeting in Vienna, the four projects with the highest score were debated to reach consensus.
RESULTS
The Wonca Europe secretariat received 12 proposals. Two proposals were excluded, as they did not ‘demonstrate joint working between at least three European partners from different countries.’ The mean sum score of the proposals did not show large differences although the top four projects could be clearly identified.
These four projects were reviewed during the EB meeting where strong and weak points were discussed. This led to two projects remaining in the competition. At the end consensus was reached awarding the Anniversary Fund to the project: ‘Chronic Condition Patient Self-management in General Practice (see Box).’ The project is a complete plan with concrete deliverables, which will have a lasting benefit to Family Medicine.
Box. Chronic condition patient self-management (CCPSM) in general practice.
Chronic diseases are acknowledged to be the major cause of death and disability worldwide, and are predicted to rise to 73% and 60% respectively by 2020. The complexity of health care for chronic disease is increasing; due to several factors including ageing populations and preventable co-morbidities. Family medicine faces increasing challenges in the management of complex multi-morbidity, with an increasing workload for GPs in Europe as we strive for better patient outcomes. It must be acknowledged that increasing demands and associated rising costs on health care systems are not sustainable.
In February 2012, the Wonca Europe Network Equip was announced the winner of the Wonca Anniversary Fund, which will report by Wonca Europe's twenty-fifth Anniversary in 2015. Equip's proposal combines their remit of advancing the quality and safety of patient care in European general practice/family medicine (GP/FM) with the need to prioritize the promotion of patients’ active involvement in their own healthcare. ‘Patient empowerment’ was adopted as the 12th characteristic of European general practice by Wonca Europe in 2011.
This Equip project aims to support European GPs and practice nurses effectively and efficiently to empower patients to improve their own self-management of chronic conditions (non-communicable disease) in the context of primary care.
Those aims will be met through the following measures: (1) Literature search and construction of a database of concise evidence summaries for dissemination in Europe; (2) Preparation of a chronic condition patient self-management (CCPSM) training package template for GPs and practice nurses across Europe; and (3) Piloting and evaluation of the training package for CCPSM in a sample of practices in several European countries.
Further details of the CCPSM project will be found on Equip's website http://www.equip.ch