Bio: Bert Vrijhoef, Ph.D., a 2008-09 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, is director of research at the University Medical Hospital Maastricht's Department of Integrated Care, as well as associate professor at Maastricht University's Department of Health Care and Nursing Science. In addition, he is leading a new research program, "Redesigning Health Care," at the Maastricht Care and Public Health Research Institute, and is a board member of the International Disease Management Association. Vrijhoef has previously worked as program director of Master Health Care Studies and is program director of Master Health Services Innovation at Maastricht University. Vrijhoef's research focus is on innovations in health services for long-term conditions as part of care-coordination interventions, and he has authored over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, with publications in the International Journal of Health Care Quality, British Medical Journal, International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, Diabetic Medicine, and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. In 2007, he was awarded Leading Researcher in Faculty of Health Sciences, and he has previously received awards from the Federation of Patients and Consumer Organizations in the Netherlands and the Dutch National Organization for Health Research and Development. Vrijhoef holds a Ph.D. from Maastricht University, and an M.Sc. from Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Placement: Group Health Cooperative
Mentors: Edward Wagner, M.D., M.P.H.
Project: Responding to the Burden of Chronic Disease: Development of a Framework to Minimize Unwanted Fragmentation of Chronic Care
Description: Bert Vrijoef aimed to clarify the consequences and drivers of fragmentation of chronic care, to identify strategies to minimize unwanted fragmentation, and to identify measures to assess the impact of such strategies. The study consisted of two phases. In phase I, he conducted semi-structured interviews with an international group of experts on chronic care fragmentation. In phase II, he used a Delphi technique among experts to analyze a conceptual set of measures of fragmentation.