Partners

Partner description

Badalona Serveis Assistencials (BSA) is an integrated private health and social care organisation with entirely public capital that manages the Hospital Municipal de Badalona, the Homecare Integrated service, the Socio Health Centre El Carme, 7 Primary Care Centres, and the Centre for Sexual and Reproductive Health. It provides care to a total population of 419,797 inhabitants in a very populated suburban area of Barcelona.

BSA has a special characteristic that distinguishes it from all the rest of the healthcare providers in Catalonia, which is that it also provides the social care services for the region of Badalona and three other towns surrounding it, thus implementing an innovated integrated social and health care model centred in the person.

When it comes to R&I, BSA has focused its strategy in the technological aspects and how these are able to improve the efficiency and efficacy of the health and social care systems by taking advantage of being a comprehensive care organisation and also by taking advantage of the huge penetration within the community. During the last years, this strategy has brought BSA to participate in a broad range of national and international projects with deployment of assisted living technologies to thousands of users. The interest in testing new technologies is reflected in the organisation’s willingness to improve the way care is provided and the willingness of professionals to participate, as well as support at political and strategic level.

Finally, BSA is the coordinator of the Badalona Reference Site on the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, which has been recently awarded with two stars, and is also a key stakeholder of the Catalonia Reference Site which has been awarded with four stars.

In January 2018 the Badalona Community Mental Health setting was integrated in Badalona Serveis Assitencials. Therefore, there are currently two BSA sites involved in the ImpleMentAll project: BSA1, implemented in the Primary Care Centers and BSA2, that involves the Community Mental Heath Centers.

Service description

TCApp - BSA- Badalona area
TCApp is a HealthApp product designed for accompanying the patient within an Eating Disorder Therapy (like Nervous Anorexia, Bulimia or Binge eating). Currently, the most accepted and reliable therapy to treat this type of mental disorders is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This kind of therapy demands to register, typically on paper, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour that the patients have throughout the day for each day until the next visit with the therapist. The information is used to analyse the development and to conduct the future treatment. However, it is very common that the patients (in most cases teenagers) end up not filling out the forms because they do not bring it along with them all the time, or just because it is kind of boring. This fact is clearly detrimental to the CBT and obstructs the right evolution of the patient. The Mobile Application TCApp allows an easy, dynamic and more fun way to register this kind of information by using a supportive link between the patients and their clinicians.

TCApp will be implemented in the 7 Primary Care Centres of BSA as an additional available treatment. Today, our General Practitioners (GPs) have the feeling that they do not have enough tools to deal with such patients, while at the same time the psychological support available is totally overloaded. The main aim is to be able to involve 100 GPs and enroll at least 40 care recipients.

Super@ tu Depresión - BSA - Badalona area
Super@ tu Depresión is an iCBT treatment co-developed by the Spanish regions of Aragón, the Basque Country, Galicia, and Catalonia in the context of the MasterMind project. The aim of the intervention is to provide a comprehensive psychotherapy approach for patients impaired by Major Depressive Disorder (mild to moderate). For BSA, this is the second approach to try to deploy iCBT in routine practice. First, through a public-private collaboration between BSA and Arvato-Bertelsmann, where both organisations joined efforts to design a platform and an intervention to deliver iCBT. After two phases of piloting with more than 400 care recipients, BSA had the chance to improve the platform and the intervention, thanks to the co-funding of the EU, and to create Super@ tu depresión.

Today, BSA has 98 professionals involved from 7 primary care centres in the usage of the platform, including GPs, primary care nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists and almost 100 care recipients in treatment. Within ImpleMentAll, BSA aims to expand the usage of the platform to its surrounding cities, starting in Montgat and Tiana. The idea is to target 300 patients. This would be an initial step with the main aim of expanding the platform for full usage in the whole of Catalonia.

Regarding BSA2, a blended treatment that combines face to face with online contacts is implemented. The ‘Super@ tu Depresión’ iCBT treatment is used as well, but the service is guided by trained therapists (psychologists and psychiatrists). Six Community Mental Health Centers and 22 psychologists and psychiatrists are involved in the project. BSA2 includes severe forms of MDD and a higher involvement of mental health professionals when compared to BSA1.