Ageing populations with rising chronicity, fragmented services delivery resulting from split management of health and social services, provider dissatisfaction over the standard of care for elderly patients and vulnerable population groups, are amongst the major health challenges throughout the Europe. To add to this, there are great disparities between the EU regions. The indicator of population healthy life years in new EU member states has been 10 years below the EU old member states average. The existing hospital-centric model of care, weak gatekeeping at primary level, and fragmented delivery of services with limited continuity of care for patients with chronic conditions are the key contributors to below the average health outcomes in these countries.

The complexity of needs arising from having multiple chronic conditions – in combination with ageing population – requires urgent changes to models of care that drive:

• A shift in focus from extension of life to quality of life, in particular the very slow growth in healthy life expectancy.
• A shift towards an environment where health and social care are treated as a single unit bringing together a range of professionals and skills from both the cure (healthcare) and care (long-term and social care) sectors.
• A shift towards community based health and social care and the need for people to coproduce a healthier population that has less need for acute services and takes more responsibility for its care.
• The priority towards prevention and support for self-management of health.
• The need for partnership and cross-sectoral approach to innovation that has significant potential to increase choice and control for European citizens and support a necessary transformation in health and social care services.

Please come and join us in Kosice on 24-25 October 2019 to share your experience and to explore opportunities related to sustainable healthcare systems in Europe. An important aim of this conference is to offer networking opportunities and foster debate among participants from all over the Europe. Through your participation, you can help developing issues to be explored further by the relevant stakeholders, and be fed into materials for upcoming policy debates.

The conference is accredited by the Slovak Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (SACCME) | Konferencia je zaradená do kreditného systému CME.